Wired

ICE's $2 Million Contract With a Spyware Vendor Is Under White House Review

by: Vas Panagiotopoulos

Immigration and Customs Enforcement's contract with Paragon Solutions faces scrutiny over whether it complies with the Biden administration's executive order on spyware, WIRED has learned.

ICE's $2 Million Contract With a Spyware Vendor Is Under White House Review

Immigration and Customs Enforcement's contract with Paragon Solutions faces scrutiny over whether it complies with the Biden administration's executive order on spyware, WIRED has learned.
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Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

A $2 million contract that United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement signed with Israeli commercial spyware vendor Paragon Solutions has been paused and placed under compliance review, WIRED has learned.

The White House’s scrutiny of the contract marks the first test of the Biden administration’s executive order restricting the government’s use of spyware.

The one-year contract between Paragon’s US subsidiary in Chantilly, Virginia, and ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Division 3 was signed on September 27 and first reported by WIRED on October 1. A few days later, on October 8, HSI issued a stop-work order for the award “to review and verify compliance with Executive Order 14093,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson tells WIRED.

The executive order signed by President Joe Biden in March 2023 aims to restrict the US government’s use of commercial spyware technology while promoting its “responsible use” that aligns with the protection of human rights.

DHS did not confirm whether the contract, which says it covers a “fully configured proprietary solution including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance, and training,” includes the deployment of Paragon’s flagship product, Graphite, a powerful spyware tool that reportedly extracts data primarily from cloud backups.

“We immediately engaged the leadership at DHS and worked very collaboratively together to understand exactly what was put in place, what the scope of this contract was, and whether or not it adhered to the procedures and requirements of the executive order,” a senior US administration official with first-hand knowledge of the workings of the executive order tells WIRED. The official requested anonymity to speak candidly about the White House’s review of the ICE contract.

Paragon Solutions did not respond to WIRED's request to comment on the contract's review.

The process laid out in the executive order requires a robust review of the due diligence regarding both the vendor and the tool, to see whether any concerns, such as counterintelligence, security, and improper use risks, arise. It also stipulates that an agency may not make operational use of the commercial spyware until at least seven days after providing this information to the White House or until the president's national security adviser consents.

“Ultimately, there will have to be a determination made by the leadership of the department. The outcome may be—based on the information and the facts that we have—that this particular vendor and tool does not spur a violation of the requirements in the executive order,” the senior official says.

While publicly available details of ICE’s contract with Paragon are relatively sparse, its existence alone raised alarms among civil liberties groups, with the nonprofit watchdog Human Rights Watch saying in a statement that “giving ICE access to spyware risks exacerbating” the department’s problematic practices. HRW also questioned what it calls the Biden administration’s “piecemeal approach” to spyware regulation.

The level of seriousness with which the US government approaches the compliance review of the Paragon contract will influence international trust in the executive order, experts say.

“We know the dangers mercenary spyware poses when sold to dictatorships, but there is also plenty of evidence of harms in democracies,” says John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab who has been instrumental in exposing spyware-related abuses. “This is why oversight, transparency, and accountability around any US agency attempt to acquire these tools is essential.”

International efforts to rein in commercial spyware are gathering pace. On October 11, during the 57th session of the Human Rights Council, United Nation member states reached a consensus to adopt language acknowledging the threat that the misuse of commercial spyware poses to democratic values, as well as the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. “This is an important norm setting, especially for countries who claim to be democracies,” says Natalia Krapiva, senior tech-legal counsel at international nonprofit Access Now.

Although the US is leading global efforts to combat spyware through its executive order, trade and visa restrictions, and sanctions, the European Union has been more lenient. Only 11 of the 27 EU member states have joined the US-led initiative stipulated in the “Joint Statement on Efforts to Counter the Proliferation and Misuse of Commercial Spyware,” which now counts 21 signatories, including Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Japan, and South Korea.

“An unregulated market is both a threat to the citizens of those countries, but also to those governments, and I think that increasingly our hope is that there is a recognition [in the EU] of that as well,” the senior US administration official tells WIRED.

The European Commission published on October 16 new guidelines on the export of cyber-surveillance items, including spyware; however, it has yet to respond to the EU Parliament's call to draft a legislative proposal or admonish countries for their misuse of the technology.

While Poland launched an inquiry into the previous government’s spyware use earlier this year, a probe in Spain over the use of spyware against Spanish politicians has so far led to no accusations against those involved, and one in Greece has cleared government agencies of any wrongdoing.

“Europe is in the midst of a mercenary spyware crisis,” says Scott-Railton. “I have looked on with puzzled wonderment as European institutions and governments fail to address this issue at scale, even though there are domestic and export-related international issues.”

With the executive order, the US focuses on its national security and foreign policy interests in the deployment of the technology in accordance with human rights and the rule of law, as well as mitigating counterintelligence risks (e.g. the targeting of US officials). Europe—though it acknowledges the foreign policy dimension—has so far primarily concentrated on human rights considerations rather than counterintelligence and national security threats.

Such a threat became apparent in August, when Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) found that Russian government hackers were using exploits made by spyware companies NSO Group and Intellexa.

Meanwhile, Access Now and Citizen Lab speculated in May that Estonia may have been behind the hacking of exiled Russian journalists, dissidents, and others with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware.

“In an attempt to protect themselves from Russia, some European countries are using the same tools against the same people that Russia is targeting,” says Access Now’s Krapiva. “By having easier access to this kind of vulnerabilities, because they are then sold on the black market, Russia is able to purchase them in the end.”

“It’s a huge mess,” she adds. “By attempting to protect national security, they actually undermine it in many ways.”

Citizen Lab’s Scott-Railton believes these developments should raise concern among European decisionmakers just as they have for their US counterparts, who emphasized the national security aspect in the executive order.

“What is it going to take for European heads of state to recognize they have a national security threat from this technology?” Scott-Railton says. “Until they recognize the twin human rights and national security threats, the way the US has, they are going to be at a tremendous security disadvantage.”

Russian Propaganda Unit Appears to Be Behind Spread of False Tim Walz Sexual Abuse Claims

by: David Gilbert

The Russian-aligned network Storm-1516 has a long history of posting fake whistleblower videos—including deepfakes—to push Kremlin talking points.

Russian Propaganda Unit Appears to Be Behind Spread of False Tim Walz Sexual Abuse Claims

The Russian-aligned network Storm-1516 has a long history of posting fake whistleblower videos—including deepfakes—to push Kremlin talking points.
Tim Walz Trump Supporters and Members of the ProKremlin Youth Movement
Photo Illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images

A Russian-aligned propaganda network notorious for creating deepfake whistleblower videos appears to be behind a coordinated effort to promote wild and baseless claims that Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz sexually assaulted one of his former students, according to several specialists tracking the disinformation campaign.

Experts believe that the campaign is tied to a network called Storm-1516, which has been linked to, among other things, a previous effort that falsely claimed vice president Kamala Harris perpetrated a hit-and-run in San Francisco in 2011. Storm-1516 has a long history of posting fake whistleblower videos, and often deepfake videos, to push Kremlin talking points to the West.

The propaganda unit’s work has successfully reached the highest levels of the Republican party, with vice presidential candidate JD Vance repeating at least one of their narratives. NBC reported this week that the group has pushed at least 50 false narratives in this manner since last fall, which comes amid a broader Russian government effort to disrupt next month’s election with the aim of helping former president Donald Trump return to the White House.

Numerous figures in MAGA world boosted the Tim Walz assault claims, including Jack Posobiec, the Pizzagate promoter who is now a member of Trump’s campaign team, and Candace Owens, the popular right-wing podcaster. The claims went viral on X last week, when an anonymous account called Black Insurrectionist posted screenshots of emails from a purported victim. Other X users quickly debunked the claims, citing formatting errors in the images that suggested the emails were fake, but days later another conspiracist posted a video on X claiming he had spoken to one of Walz's supposed victims on the phone—without providing any proof. The video racked up millions of hits.

Then, on Wednesday, a video claiming to show a former student of Walz describing abuse by the former football coach spread widely on X. According to a WIRED analysis using several deepfake detector tools, the video was created using AI. The video, shared by a prominent anonymous QAnon-promoting account, garnered over 4.3 million views before it was deleted.

The campaign to attack Walz predates the video; it traces back to John Dougan, a former Florida cop who now lives in Moscow and runs a network of pro-Kremlin websites. Dougan appeared on Zak Paine’s QAnon show RedPill78 on October 5 with an anonymous man named “Rick,” who said he was a foreign exchange student at Mankato West High School in 2004 when Walz was a teacher there. “Rick” then claimed Walz assaulted him. Dougan did not respond to a request for comment.

The claims, however, didn’t go viral until last week and the release of the deepfake video.

Darren Linvill, codirector at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, tells WIRED that he immediately recognized this tactic as part of Russia’s well-established disinformation playbook.

“There is little doubt this is Storm-1516,” says Linvill, whose team uncovered the network last fall.

Linvill says the account that first shared the AI-altered video bears all the hallmarks of previous Storm-1516 campaigns. “It is standard for them to create an X or YouTube account for initial placement of stories,” says Linvill.

The campaign orchestrated by Storm-1516 often begins with the posting of a fake story and video from a whistleblower or citizen journalist, the US mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe outlined in July. Disinformation is “amplified by other seemingly unaffiliated online networks,” the US mission stated. The claims then take on a life of their own, shared and reposted by unwitting social media users who likely have no idea of where the videos originated.

The fake stories can also be picked up by other media outlets that cover viral social media stories. In the case of the Walz claims, they ended up on MSN, a news aggregation site owned by Microsoft.

In the past, Storm-1516 has relied on a network of fake news websites run by Dougan to push its narratives. On Saturday, a story that referenced the RedPill78 interview, the Black Insurrectionist posts, and the deepfake video was published on over 100 of Dougan’s websites simultaneously.

This was first discovered by Alex Liberty, a researcher who tracks the activity of Russia’s propaganda networks and who agrees with Linvill’s assertion that the deepfake video bears all the hallmarks of a Storm-1516 campaign.

“We believe that it might be a coordinated campaign in [an] attempt to bring numerous false accusations of the same nature against Tim Walz through different channels and in different formats in order to bring an image of legitimacy to the narrative,” Liberty tells WIRED.

McKenzie Sadeghi, the AI and foreign influence editor at NewsGuard, agrees.

“The false narrative appears to be part of a wider campaign pushed by pro-Kremlin media and QAnon influencers ahead of the November 5, 2024, US elections aimed at portraying Walz, whose political appeal is as an everyman schoolteacher and coach, as a pedophile who had inappropriate relationships with minors,” Sadeghi wrote in an analysis of the deepfake video.

From the very beginning, the allegations against Walz were easily debunked. In his interview on the RedPill78 QAnon show, Dougan’s source claimed he was in the US thanks to the State Department–funded Future Leaders Exchange program, which allows students from countries formerly under the control of the Soviet Union the chance to study in the US for a year.

However, a spokesperson for the US State Department, told NewsGuard that it has no record of any Future Leaders Exchange student from Kazakhstan in Mankato area schools from 2000 through 2020. Mankato Area Public Schools communications director Mel Helling told NewsGuard the allegations were “outlandish.”

The baseless claims were shared by some far-right accounts in the days after the episode was published, but they didn’t really take hold until a week later, when the X account known as Black Insurrectionist posted a clip from Dougan’s RedPill78 episode. The clip was viewed over 800,000 times.

Google search trends data shows a huge spike in people searching for “Tim Walz pedophile” and “Tim Walz abuse” on October 13, the day the Black Insurrectionist account began posting their claims.

The Black Insurrectionist account is anonymous and launched a year ago; its followers include Donald Trump Jr. and former Trump adviser Roger Stone. The account’s bio reads: “I am MAGA.” It rose to prominence weeks before the Walz post, when it claimed to have been in contact with a whistleblower at ABC who said Harris had been provided with the questions ahead of her September debate with former president Donald Trump. Those claims were widely debunked by multiple major fact-checking and media organizations.

Last week, the Black Insurrectionist account shared screenshots of email correspondence the account had with an alleged victim on X. Almost immediately, the evidence was questioned when X users spotted a text cursor in one of the screenshots, suggesting that Black Insurrectionist was editing the document. Others pointed out that the date and time format shown in some of the screenshots was inconsistent with how they are displayed on real emails.

Black Insurrectionist initially defended itself before going silent. The account was deleted on Thursday.

The two dozen posts from Black Insurrectionist laying out their alleged evidence have been viewed over 33 million times, according to X’s own metrics, and have been shared on numerous other platforms, including Truth Social, Instagram, Telegram, and TikTok.

Among those sharing Black Insurrectiont’s claims was Paine, who hosted Dougan on his QAnon show. “I have no reason to doubt the veracity of this story,” Paine wrote on X.

The posts have also caught the attention of the wider MAGA universe in a way that Dougan’s initial claims didn’t. Prominent right-wing figures like Owens and Posobiec both flagged the “allegations” as something worth looking into.

Owens discussed the conspiracy on her top-rated podcast, with the episode racking up over 630,000 views on YouTube since it was posted on Wednesday.

Posobiec wrote on X that there were “lots of allegations going around regarding Tim Walz sexually abusing young student(s).” While he added that he didn’t “know about any of the recent allegations being made,” he did share a link to Dougan’s claims from earlier in the month.

When Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee for president in July, Russian-aligned propaganda networks struggled to mount effective disinformation campaigns targeting the vice president and her team.

But as Microsoft reported in the summer, those campaigns have started to find their footing. "The shift to focusing on the Harris-Walz campaign reflects a strategic move by Russian actors aimed at exploiting any perceived vulnerabilities in the new candidates," Clint Watts, head of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, wrote in August.

14 Best Bluetooth Speakers Our Testers Jammed With in 2024

by: Parker Hall, Ryan Waniata

These are our favorite portable speakers of all shapes and sizes, from clip-ons to a massive boom box.

The Best Bluetooth Speakers

These are our favorite portable speakers of all shapes and sizes, from clip-ons to a massive boom box.

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Best Overall
Ultimate Ears Boom 4
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Best Smart Speaker
Sonos Roam 2
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Best Small Speaker
Sony SRS-XB100
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Biggest Battery
Tribit Stormbox Flow
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4 / 15

8 Thoughtful Gifts for Your Coworkers

by: Boutayna Chokrane

You see them every single day (almost). Our curated guide features personalized gifts for every office personality, from the foodies to the minimalists.

8 Thoughtful Gifts for Your Coworkers

You see them every single day (almost). Our curated guide features personalized gifts for every office personality, from the foodies to the minimalists.
A tumbler mug a portable charger a blue totebag and a brown bag to hold a water bottle. Decorative background blue foil...
Photograph: Amazon; Getty Images

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For the Foodie
Omsom Best Seller Set
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For the Tailgater
Yeti Rambler 10 oz Wine Tumbler with MagSlider Lid
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For the Snacker
TokyoTreat Snack Box
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For the Tech Whiz
Anker Nano Power Bank
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The Volkswagen ID Buzz Is Finally Here. We Took the Electric Microbus for a Drive

by: Roberto Baldwin

One of the most beloved vehicles of the 20th century returns as an electric family fun machine. The high price and the low range might raise some eyebrows, but this van delivers.

The Volkswagen ID Buzz Is Finally Here. We Took the Electric Microbus for a Drive

One of the most beloved vehicles of the 20th century returns as an electric family fun machine. The high price and the low range might raise some eyebrows, but this van delivers.
Car Transportation Vehicle Chair Furniture Machine Wheel Alloy Wheel Car Wheel Spoke and Tire
Photography Courtesy of VW

With the 2017 unveiling of the ID Buzz concept, Volkswagen announced that the iconic VW bus—forever a symbol of beachy road trips and 1960’s hippie freedom—was returning to the market as an EV. The hype machine went into overdrive.

Jump to 2024, and the vehicle that has been on roads in Europe for about two years is finally, finally, making its way onto US shores.

The cost (around $60K) is maybe higher than many had anticipated, and the vehicle's range (around 230 miles) is likely lower than many had hoped. Throw in a very long wait from the unveiling to its arrival in the marketplace, and the hype has dwindled. After spending a day behind the wheel of one, however, I can say that the ID Buzz has rekindled some of that excitement I felt way back in 2017.

Home on the Range

A VW Bus can't be mentioned without thoughts of tie-dyed Deadheads behind the wheel. Likewise, an EV can't be unveiled to the public without mention (and scrutiny) of its range. The ID Buzz arrives with EPA range numbers that are sure to harsh some mellows: 234 miles for the rear-wheel-drive variant, and 231 miles for the all-wheel-drive model. That’s on par for an electric van but far short of most family vehicles, which can top 300 miles per charge.

During my drive—which took me through San Francisco, across the Golden Gate to Marin County, on some Bay Area freeways, and along the region’s scenic backroads—the RWD version of the ID Buzz averaged 2.8 miles per killowatt-hour over 54 miles. I should note that automotive journalists tend to push vehicles to their limits, testing acceleration, stopping frequently, judging the handling, and so on. Based on the vehicle's 91 kWh gross capacity pack (of which, 86 kWh is available), the van was posting 240 miles of range. In regular use, it's likely it will hit 245 to 250 miles of range.

That discrepancy between reported range and real-world range isn't completely unexpected, as the Volkswagen Group has a history of underreporting its numbers. It did so with the Audi E-Tron, Porsche Taycan, and VW ID 4.

The AWD version posted an even more impressive 3.0 miles per kWh, bringing its range up to 258 miles, as measured over 40 miles. During this portion of the day's drive, more of the route was on freeways; I experienced moderate traffic during this period and rarely got above 65 miles an hour. In fact, my average speed was 42 miles per hour.

This real-world range should be more than adequate for hauling people and cargo around town. For road trips and camping—what it feels made for—the vehicle's very quick 200-kW peak charging rate (via a 400-volt architecture) does help reduce the pain of a sub-250-mile EPA rating. I'd rather have a vehicle with ID Buzz's battery capacity with 230 miles of range that charges up at a super-fast 200 kW than a vehicle with 300 miles of range that charges at a much slower 120 kW.

For those charging at home with a wall socket, the vehicle supports AC charging at up to 11 kW.

The Transporter

If you've ever had the pleasure of piloting an old-school VW bus (aka Samba, Bulli, Transporter, or Microbus), then you're aware how painfully slow it is to accelerate. It feels like the van’s zero-to-60 time is about three days. The ID Buzz's electric drivetrain solves that issue, even if it's never going to impress your Hyundai Ioniq 5N–owning friends. The “speedy” AWD trim level with 335 horsepower and 512 pound-feet of torque can motor from zero to 60 in about six seconds.

In a world where every EV needs to be able to pull a quarter mile in under 13 seconds, the leisurely acceleration of the ID Buzz is not only appropriate but welcome. It's a van. It hauls your whole family. Undue acceleration makes passengers uncomfortable and scatters your Kirkland Signature sundries around in the cargo area.

I found the added acceleration helpful in a few instances while overtaking other drivers, but the traction (combined with appropriate all-season or winter tires) will make the AWD ID Buzz a solid winter vehicle for those living in regions with snow and ice.

For a daily driver, I prefer the lighter RWD variant with its 282 horsepower and 413 pound-feet of torque. It's more engaging around corners, and the reduced heft of the vehicle gives it a more nimble feel. To be clear, the Buzz is not a canyon-carving machine, but I was impressed by its ability to handle the curves along the Bay Area backroads. As with all EVs, the low center of gravity afforded by the battery pack helps. For its intended purpose as a people mover though, the vehicle's suspension feels just a bit too stiff. Sure, that helps with cornering, but it translates to a slighter bumpier ride.

Slow Down There, Bulli

One interesting aspect of the ID Buzz is how Volkswagen handles passive regenerative braking. In the default comfort mode, it does not use passive regen. You can lift your foot off the accelerator and just coast. If you turn the steering column-mounted shifter to B, passive regen is engaged. It feels about mid-level compared to the similar feature on other vehicles; the van slows but not too much. There is no option for the type of one-pedal driving found in EVs from BMW, Chevrolet, and Tesla.

You can also access an even less aggressive passive regen when the vehicle is placed into Sport mode. Volkswagen says it's there to re-create the feeling of engine braking. The problem here is that all the driving modes are located in the vehicle settings portion of the infotainment system. Changing the drive mode requires two taps on the main screen. Sport mode makes only a slight adjustment to the acceleration mapping to increase the Buzz’s acceleration speed, so it's not really worth the hassle. Unless you turn this on before you embark, stick with Comfort mode.

So Much Room for Activities

The hype around the ID Buzz proves the power of nostalgia. And since the automotive world loves celebrating the past, automakers exploit that feeling in their designs. The DNA of those original VW microbuses is apparent in the ID Buzz. It has short overhangs, tons of windows, and a two-tone paint job. It's the microbus we never bought (but maybe wanted to) wrapped in a greener package.

Thankfully, just like the original Microbus, the ID Buzz is a wonder of utility. It has a whopping 146 cubic feet of cargo space. That's one cubic foot more than a Chevy Suburban and five more than the Chrysler Pacifica plug-in hybrid. The RWD version comes standard with seating for seven. The AWD variant ships with captains chairs in the second row and seats six. All three rows can be slid forward or back to adjust for legroom and storage.

Unlike in most three-row SUVs, sitting at the back of the Buzz was a comfortable experience for my 6-foot-3 body. We also piled four WIRED colleagues into the van for a long loop around the neighborhood, and everyone had plenty of room.

With all the seats in use, the cargo space behind the third row is 18.6 cubic feet. That’s enough for a large grocery haul or several peoples’ luggage. The third row of seats can be folded down to make a flat surface in the back, and VW offers an insert for the rear cargo area that comes with two handy drawers. If you need more space, the third row can be removed entirely.

To help keep items from sliding around, the Buzz is equipped with velcro partitions that are stored in the walls of the cargo area. The center console is removable and moveable. You can move it from between the front seats to the second row in vehicles equipped with captain's chairs. Or just pull it out entirely. One nice touch: The dividers in the center console double as a bottle opener and an ice scraper.

Meanwhile, VW has gone full USB-C. Every seat gets at least one charging port. There are seven ports in total. There’s also one 15-watt USB port near the rearview mirror to accommodate a dash cam. A 110-volt, 150-watt power outlet is available under the passenger seat.

This all before you get into the world of aftermarket add-ons, where you are sure to find a plethora of options for the Buzz. It's all very clever, and a reminder that the VW bus is a canvas for your lifestyle.

Finally, the issues that have famously been plaguing VW’s infotainment system for years have been solved. The 12.9-inch display was easy to use, navigate, and more importantly, had little in the way of latency. VW has added ChatGPT integration for the voice assistant, but that requires a network connection, and I wasn’t able to fully test it, since most of the drive was in areas where cell service was spotty or absent. When I was able to test it, it returned a solid answer in a timely fashion.

Weirdly though, as an adventure vehicle, the Buzz does not ship with a dog or camping mode. When asked about this, Volkswagen said it was looking into it. More than a few journalists inquired about these features, which are found in Rivians and Teslas and make all sorts of sense for the Buzz. So don’t be surprised if those modes show up in an OTA software update.

How Much Again?

Which brings us to the second sticking point of the ID Buzz. The RWD Pro S model starts at $59,995, and this is because Volkswagen essentially offers a mid-level trim as the entry-level model. For example, this starting configuration ships with 12-way adjustable heated and vented front seats with a massage feature. Heated seats are also standard for the second row. It has three-zone climate controls.

All those USB ports are also standard. So is that 110V outlet. For those late night raves, a 30-color ambient lighting feature is standard.

Volkswagen is building all its ID Buzzes at a single factory in Hanover, Germany. This means US buyers cannot claim an EV purchase tax credit, since the Inflation Reduction Act requires vehicles to be assembled in North America to qualify for the tax break. If the automaker offers a lease, then the van does become eligible.

Volkswagen is aware this is a niche vehicle. While the buzz around the Buzz has died down, it will still likely sell out in its first year. VW would not comment on whether it will offer a cheaper trim option in the future or whether it plans to expand its production to the US.

Yet even with its lack of a true entry-level price and a range that, while underreported, is less than anticipated, the ID Buzz is exactly what it should be. It is a fun-to-drive nostalgia machine with enough storage and utility to make it a solid weekend hauler for families who enjoy an active lifestyle. And your five children will be quite comfortable in the back as you bore them to tears with your Summer of Love playlist.

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  • The Best Hearing Aids of 2024, Reviewed by Experts

    by: Christopher Null

    These WIRED-tested and audiologist-approved devices will help you hear sounds more clearly. Never miss out on a dinner conversation again.

    The Best Hearing Aids

    These WIRED-tested and audiologist-approved devices will help you hear sounds more clearly. Never miss out on a dinner conversation again.

    If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

    Featured in this article

    Best Overall
    Jabra Enhance Select 300
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    Best Budget Hearing Aids
    Eargo Link
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    Best Upgrade
    Jabra Enhance Select 500
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    Best In-the-Ear Hearing Aids
    Sony CRE-C20 Hearing Aids
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    Kwikset’s Newest Lock Has the Best Door Sensor I’ve Ever Seen

    by: Nena Farrell

    The Kwikset Halo Select arrives later this fall with Matter compatibility and a magnet-based, super-slim door sensor.

    Kwikset’s Newest Lock Has the Best Door Sensor I’ve Ever Seen

    The Kwikset Halo Select arrives later this fall with Matter compatibility and a magnet-based, super-slim door-status sensor. Farewell, chunky sensors on my doorframe.
    Kwikset Halo Select an electronic door lock and keypad. Decorative background orange and pink paint swirls.
    Photograph: Kwikset; Getty Images

    If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED

    Kwikset is no newbie in the lock game. The company has been around since the 1940s making your classic locks and doorknobs and has been making smart locks under its Halo line since 2019. The Halo line originally consisted of two locks, the Halo Keypad and the Halo Touch. As of today there’s a third: the Halo Select.

    The Halo Select packs a variety of updates and changes from the previous Halo models, including a quieter motor, unlocking via geofence, and a brand-new door sensor. It's also the brand's first lock compatible with Matter, the smart-home standard that allows smart-home devices to communicate without requiring multiple apps and hubs.

    It took Kwikset a while to come out with a Matter lock after companies like Yale did it first. “This was not an easy feat for us," said Charlie Doughtery, Kwikset's electronics brand manager. "We as a company wanted to put out something that was great for consumers and offered a best-in-class consumer experience, and really made sure we got there before we decided to release to market.”

    A lot of these features we've already seen in smart locks. But based on what we've seen so far, the Matter experience is one of the best I've seen, and the super-minimal door-status sensor is a particularly refreshing take in the world of smart sensors. More on that below.

    Matter Time

    Photograph: Kwikset

    This isn't the first Matter smart lock, but the Matter experience that Kwikset designed into its app is pretty impressive.

    Now, the whole point of Matter is that you shouldn't need separate apps to manage all of your devices. Kwikset still requires you to start with its app for the initial setup, but then you'll head into the Lock Settings and tap on the section labeled Matter, where you can easily switch over control to your smart-home ecosystem of choice. The app will prompt you to choose Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Home, or Samsung SmartThings when you switch over to Matter, and then will hand over the keys to your choice of ecosystem.

    Photograph: Kwikset

    After testing a few Matter devices, I don't mind starting with a brand's app, and I think it especially makes sense when installing a smart lock as opposed to, say, setting up a smart plug or smart light bulb. There are several more steps involved when you install a smart lock, and getting it wrong can mean no working lock whatsoever on your door.

    The Kwikset app will also make it easy to switch back control to Kwikset and Wi-Fi if you decide Matter isn't for you. There are more features available if you choose the Kwikset-controlled path, like guest codes and using the included door-status sensor, but the lock does promise better battery life when using Matter.

    Slim Sensing

    Photograph: Kwikset

    The most exciting addition to Kwikset's newest lock is the included door-status sensor. It works like any other door sensor—the sensors line up to tell you whether the door is closed—but it's a super-slim, discreet style compared to other options on the market.

    Kwikset hasn't had door sensors before, but other smart-lock brands like Yale (which now owns August locks) have offered these for a while in conjunction with their locks, and plenty of other smart-home gadget makers have offered stand-alone door and window sensors for a similar experience. In both cases, it's a two-part sensor that sits on your doorframe or window frame and door or window, and usually requires a few sticky cushions to perfectly line the two parts up so that the sensor can correctly identify when the door is opened or closed.

    Kwikset won't use that system. Instead, the brand designed a super-slim magnet-style sensor that you'll place into the doorjamb where it can connect with the lock. It looks incredibly sleek and seems like it would be much easier to place than trying to perfectly line up two separate sensors on a door and frame. Only testing will tell if this is indeed the case, and it's top of my testing list once it becomes available.

    The Kwikset Halo doesn't have a specific launch date but is expected to be available at retailers like Lowe's and Amazon by mid-November and will retail for $279.

    Apple AirPods Pro 2 With Hearing Aid Feature Review: A Promising Step

    by: Christopher Null

    Apple takes on hearing loss, and its first product is a big step in the right direction.

    Review: Apple AirPods Pro 2 With Hearing Aid Feature

    Apple takes on hearing loss, and its first product is a big step in the right direction.
    WIRED Recommends
    AirPods Pro 2 white earbuds hovering over an open ovalshaped case and a white case with a small plug below it....
    Photograph: Apple
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    Rating:

    8/10

    WIRED
    Free upgrade if you already own the product. Very comfortable. Effective hearing support, particularly compared to other products at this price. Outstanding streaming experience.
    TIRED
    Some audio artifacts and hiss I couldn’t shake. Poor battery life amongst hearing aids. In-app hearing test didn’t cut it.

    The first thing you need to know about wearing Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 earbuds and using them as hearing aids is that you will begin every conversation you have with some variation of:

    Yes, I can hear you. These are hearing aids.

    No, really. I know they are AirPods, but they’re also hearing aids.

    Sorry, I’m not being rude, I promise.

    This sorrowful introduction will play out by the millions in the months that come, now that the hearing aid features of AirPods Pro 2 have officially launched. Whether people will get over that hump and normalize the wearing of AirPods in social settings, at work, and in pretty much any other situation, so you no longer have to apologize up front—well, we’ll have to wait and see.

    Photograph: Christopher Null

    As a refresher, the Apple AirPods Pro 2 I’m reviewing here aren't new. They’re the same old second-generation wireless earbuds from 2022 you might already have (read our review here), but Apple has a new software update that enables hearing-centric features. This is a first for the industry and quite a unique development because suddenly millions of users will now find themselves with hearing aids in their pockets whether or not they want (or need) them.

    The new features will be delivered as an iOS software update the week of October 28. I’ve been using the AirPods Pro 2 as hearing aids for more than a week with a beta version of the software. It's worth noting that while you can use Apple's audio products with Android phones, all hearing aid features first need to be configured via iOS because they’re built into Apple’s operating system. Any further adjustments must also be made while connected to an iOS device.

    Once you have iOS updated, getting started with the hearing aid features involves a process similar to the one offered by any number of over-the-counter hearing aid providers, only fully Apple-ified. A new page inside the AirPods Pro 2 menu on your iPhone directs you to “Set Up Hearing Aid Mode” and “Take a Hearing Test.”

    Photograph: Christopher Null via AirPods Pro 2 menu

    This test is familiar, with pings delivered at various frequencies and volumes to each ear. The process takes about 10 minutes, and at the end of that time, you’re left with an audiogram that shows where your hearing is strong and where it's weak. Apple also calculates an overall estimate of hearing loss in each ear giving you an “at a glance” look at your hearing loss. In my first test, the system calculated a 25-decibel (dB) loss in my left ear and a 34-dB loss in my right ear.

    These numbers didn’t line up perfectly with my most recent professional audiogram (24 dB left, 25 dB right), but I ran with Apple’s data for a while to see how things would go. The right ear was noticeably off. (Repeated attempts to take the hearing test resulted in an “Unable to Classify” error; a fourth test finally got things close enough.) Soon enough I updated the data by uploading my professional audiogram to iOS—simply snap a photo of it. Once this is captured, Apple provides a small table of hearing loss values you can tweak manually in case the scan has made a mistake, or you can start from the table and enter all the values by hand.

    Photograph: Christopher Null via AirPods Pro 2 menu

    In my case, my audiogram didn’t have measurements at the very lowest frequency of 125 Hz, and the software assigned random values there instead of leaving them blank. That was an easy fix, and other than this tiny hiccup, the process of adding my audiogram was as convenient as any other hearing aid I’ve tested—and faster, since many providers require an audiologist to receive the scan and enter the tuning values for you, a process that can take several hours or even days.

    The AirPods Pro 2's hearing aid mode only works when the “Transparency” Noise Control mode is active. This can be a little confusing (as is working with the rather large number of audio options now available), and I tended to accidentally switch modes when adjusting the earbuds. For various reasons, I was constantly double-checking the app to ensure I was in the right mode.

    I tested the hearing aids in various settings, from one-on-one conversations and bingeing media to standing in the thick of a Chappell Roan concert. Overall, I experienced very good results. Conversation was easy and clear, even at low volumes, and I had less trouble with TV dialog and other often indistinct sounds. My initial settings generated a fair amount of hiss, akin to a distant, droning air conditioner. After updating the tuning with my professional audiogram settings and continuing to tweak settings, that hiss became less pronounced, though it was still noticeable.

    A bigger issue I encountered was that the AirPods often boosted the volume on the things I least wanted to hear: a window air conditioner, water running from the faucet, keyboard clacks, or the fan on my PC. Sure, conversations sounded good, but the air purifier behind my desk sounded great.

    There was also an annoying tendency for the volume level to suddenly jump up when the ambient volume level rose, creating a kind of “pop-in” effect that would sometimes affect only one ear and abruptly bring otherwise muted background noises front and center. The impact is more pronounced because AirPods Pro are only available with closed eartips (four sizes are included), which block out all ambient noise. It’s apparently a necessity for the kind of audio processing Apple does here, but it can create an isolating effect in addition to these kinds of weird audio artifacts, which is why I always prefer open eartips.

    Photograph: Christopher Null via AirPods Pro 2 menu

    Some of this can be tweaked by fine-tuning the experience, which you can do under “Adjustments” in the Hearing Assistance menu. There’s a lot to work through here, including a volume slider (which often made it louder than I wanted), left-right balance, a “tone” system that lets you tweak volume to be “darker” or “brighter,” and—critically—an ambient noise-reduction mode I highly recommend maxing out. A “conversation boost” setting is Apple’s version of a directional listening mode that lets you highlight sounds coming from in front of you. Notably lacking, however, are any environmental modes, which are the bread and butter of most hearing aid products, but which I didn’t overly miss on the AirPods Pro 2.

    You can make some of these adjustments by manipulating the stems of the earbuds, which now have even more functions to master. These hardware operations can be finicky, and in almost every situation, the app is a lot more foolproof and easier to use.

    One of the key touted features is the new Media Assist mode, which applies your hearing aid settings to streamed music, video, and phone calls. It makes a big difference and solidifies why these wireless earbuds are so beloved for their primary function of listening to stuff. I don’t think I’ve had a better earbud experience than when using AirPods Pro 2 with the Media Assist mode on after properly tuning them to my audiogram—and this is where closed eartips shine. While not part of the Hearing Aid system, I also found the new Hearing Protection features to be a godsend, turning what would have been a deafening concert experience into a pleasantly approachable afternoon.

    Photograph: Christopher Null

    It’s no secret that AirPods are big: At 5.32 grams each, they’re now some of the heaviest hearing aids on the market. And yet I found them incredibly comfortable to wear, even for long stretches, which is probably a big part of why they’re so popular. Unfortunately, battery life is rather poor as far as hearing aids go: a maximum of six hours per charge, with 30 hours total available if you include top-ups when they’re dropped into the USB-C case. That won’t cut it for all-day hearing aid wearers, many of whom will likely find they need to recharge twice in a single day.

    But the AirPod Pro 2 are probably not designed for the all-day hearing aid user. Instead, they’re for someone who needs an occasional boost to their hearing, maybe in certain scenarios, who also just so happens to have these earbuds in their messenger bag. Just pop in the AirPods when you need them, then stow them away again when you’re in a friendlier audio environment or are working alone.

    Nothing to apologize for about that.

    In the Kentucky Mountains, a Bitcoin Mining Dream Turned Into a Nightmare

    by: Joel Khalili

    When bitcoin was on a hot streak, owners of small industrial facilities in Kentucky struck up crypto mining partnerships with Chinese companies. Then things fell apart.

    In the Kentucky Mountains, a Bitcoin Mining Dream Turned Into a Nightmare

    When bitcoin was on a hot streak, owners of small industrial facilities in Kentucky struck up crypto mining partnerships with Chinese companies. Then things fell apart.
    A photo illustration of a wilting tomato plant with a bitcoin hanging from it.
    Photo-Illustration: Wired Staff/Getty Images

    On a dead-end road that climbs out of the tiny city of Jenkins, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Eastern Kentucky, there stands a large warehouse with a mint green roof. It shares the road with a few other businesses, but is otherwise surrounded by an expanse of open fields and tree-lined slopes. Inside, the warehouse is stacked high with racks on racks of computers—thousands of them. But none have ever been switched on.

    The warehouse is owned by Mohawk Energy, a company cofounded by Kentucky state senator Brandon Smith in 2005, originally to resculpt landscapes disfigured by coal mining. After lying dormant for a period, Mohawk was reincarnated in 2022 when Smith struck a deal with HBTPower, a company then owned by Chinese crypto exchange Huobi, which wanted to use the warehouse for a bitcoin mining operation.

    Under the deal, Mohawk promised to fit up its warehouse with the necessary power infrastructure, operate the equipment, and funnel any bitcoin produced to HBT. In return, HBT would pay Mohawk a monthly hosting fee, a cut of its mining revenue, and the associated energy bills.

    Smith says he hoped the arrangement would generate tax revenue and create jobs for former coal miners, who could be trained as repair technicians. The coal industry departed Jenkins long ago, the reserves depleted, leaving people in search of work. More than a third now live below the poverty line, per the latest census data. “I liked the idea of going from one type of mining to a new type,” says Smith. “I thought, now in Eastern Kentucky we are going to have our time—we’re going to catch up and play a part in the tech future.”

    But after a promising start, the relationship between Mohawk and HBT soured and then fell apart. “Nothing has ever been turned on. It’s a fascinating, almost Willy Wonka–type atmosphere when you walk through,” says Smith. “It has turned into a disaster.”

    In November 2023, HBT brought a lawsuit in federal court, alleging that Mohawk had breached its contract on several fronts, including by failing to install the appropriate power infrastructure and secure certain power subsidies, and attempting to sell off the mining equipment. “Ultimately, the source of the current dispute is Mohawk’s basic failure to comply with its obligations, not only in a timely way, but at all in many regards,” says Harout Samra, a specialist in international dispute resolution at law firm DLA Piper and representative for HBT.

    Mohawk sued HBT in return, contesting the various alleged breaches and claiming that HBT is delinquent on more than $700,000 in rent, labor, and fit-up costs. The company is also seeking damages relating to the loss of income over the term of the contract and the inability to bring a new tenant into the facility while the equipment remains on-site. “Huobi simply made a bargain it believes now is a bad one, and wants to get out of it without paying the funds it owes,” the filing states.

    The legal conflict, which remains unresolved, is just one in a series of fights between Chinese companies and the owners of industrial facilities in the rural US over failed bitcoin mining partnerships. What looked to facility owners in Kentucky like an irresistible opportunity to tap into a new line of business in an otherwise fallow period has turned into a nightmare. They claim to have been saddled with unpaid hosting fees and energy bills worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, with few options for recovering the money. The Chinese parties have been left equally displeased. “HBTPower obviously regrets that this opportunity has ultimately played out the way it has,” says Samra.

    The bitcoin mining game—a race between computers to win the right to process a bundle of transactions and claim a crypto reward—is dominated by large corporations that own and operate industrial-scale facilities. But in 2021 and 2022, smaller-scale operations began to proliferate in the US countryside wherever there was available power, including in Kentucky. “A lot of mom-and-pop shops opened up,” says Phil Harvey, CEO at Sabre56, a firm that consults on crypto mining projects and operates its own facilities. “Appalachia has always been a good source of power.”

    These small facilities were plugging a gap in the market. A ban on crypto mining in China had left businesses casting about for a new home for their many millions of dollars’ worth of mining equipment. “A lot of wealthy Chinese businesses were affected,” says Harvey. “Every minute these machines are down, they are losing revenue.” Meanwhile, as the price of bitcoin ballooned—and the profitability of mining along with it—mining firms and investor groups began to hoard large quantities of bitcoin mining equipment of their own, says Harvey, without considering where they might deploy it.

    In an overheated market, holders of mining equipment jumped into hosting arrangements at short notice with owners of small facilities, some of whom had no prior experience and insufficient expertise, who agreed to install the equipment and run the mining operations on their behalf.

    But the haste with which these hosting relationships came together, in the name of striking while bitcoin was hot, says Harvey, set many of the partnerships up for failure. There was limited due diligence conducted by parties on both sides, delays in kitting out facilities and deploying equipment, and disputes over payment terms, he says, among other points of friction. “It's a snowball effect where everyone just ends up getting pissed off with each other,” says Harvey.

    Though the American market proved more expensive and bureaucratic than some Chinese businesses expected, says Harvey, problems were also caused by the hubris of facility owners, some of whom found themselves in over their heads. “It’s no joke running a [bitcoin mining] operation of any kind of scale,” he says. “Just because the Chinese are tough to do business with, doesn’t mean they are the ones in the wrong. I would say that blame is equally shared.”

    The law firm acting for Mohawk in its dispute with HBT, Anna Whites Law Office, has represented multiple owners of small facilities in Kentucky in similar legal conflicts with Chinese partners. The cases differ from the Mohawk situation, says attorney Anna Whites, founder of the firm, but share a common thread: “We saw a pattern that [companies with ties to China] would ship in machines with uncertain provenance, mine very heavily for three months, then run without paying the bill,” she claims.

    Some of the cases settled out of court; Whites is unable to supply the details for reasons of client confidentiality. But others continue to drag on.

    Biofuel Mining, a company formerly co-owned by Smith, is involved in legal tangles with two companies that Whites believes to be run out of China: Touzi Tech and VCV Power Gamma. Although both are incorporated in Delaware, per SEC filings, they conduct business in Mandarin and cannot be reached at their listed US addresses, Whites claims. “It's pretty standard for the foreign entities from any country to get a short-term office so that they have less scrutiny from US investors and government agencies,” she says.

    In both cases, Biofuel claims, the firms shipped equipment from China to its hosting facility in Eastern Kentucky, then walked away with the bitcoin produced, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid energy bills and hosting fees.

    Biofuel reached a settlement with Touzi in early 2022 for $60,000, but despite having handed back the mining equipment, it claims not to have received the sum it is owed under the agreement.

    In the still-unresolved spat with VCV, Biofuel received permission from the Martin County Circuit Court in Kentucky to sell off the mining equipment, claims Whites, to recoup a portion of the funds it is owed (she has not confirmed the amount), but she alleges that no damages have yet been awarded. VCV has stopped responding to communications, she claims.

    Biofuel has since dissolved, put out of business by the failed hosting ventures. “I literally lost my house—I lost everything. It financially ruined me,” says Wes Hamilton, former Biofuel Mining CEO. “I’m just so frustrated about the whole thing.”

    WIRED contacted VCV and Touzi for comment, but did not receive any response.

    There are few financial recovery options for companies like Mohawk and Biofuel. The situation is made more difficult, as in the Mohawk case, if they are dealing with so-called special purpose entities. Because they are set up by their parent companies for a single specific business venture, these entities need not be concerned about their long-term ability to operate in the US.

    “It certainly can be more difficult to recover damages from a non-US counterparty,” says Kim Havlin, a partner in the global commercial litigation practice at law firm White & Case. “There is certainly a risk that an entity that doesn’t need to be in the US may just ignore the case.”

    Even if the Kentucky facility owners win out in court, it could be difficult to collect any damages awarded. “A judgment is essentially a piece of paper. Any judgment needs to be turned into assets or cash in order to be valuable,” says Havlin. If the opposing party refuses to pay up and has no US assets to collect against, sometimes that isn’t possible.

    Almost a year after the dispute began, the Mohawk case is stuck in legal limbo. In a setback for Mohawk, the presiding judge recently denied its motion to dismiss HBT’s complaint, on the basis that it had failed to sufficiently back up its argument. The judge also pushed Mohawk’s countersuit into arbitration, a forum for resolving disputes privately instead of in open court. Non-US parties tend to prefer arbitration as a way to “remove a home forum from both sides,” explains Havlin. “You can pick an arbitral seat in neither country as a means of creating a neutral playing field.” A parallel federal court hearing is set for December to consider whether an injunction should be imposed on Mohawk, preventing it from selling off the remaining HBT equipment in its possession.

    Smith has given up on the idea of recovering the full amount he claims to be owed. “We’re at the point that it’s almost silly to even be arguing about breaking even,” he says.

    In an interview with PBS that aired in September 2023, touting the Mohawk Energy facility, Smith said he hoped to prove that not every business that blew into Jenkins would abandon the area. “I’ve stood at their ribbon cuttings, then watched them leave. I’d like to do something to let people know that not everybody is like that,” he said.

    After the relationship with HBT collapsed last year, Smith faces the prospect of Mohawk becoming yet another false start. With the facility inactive, the company has been forced to dismiss the former coal miners brought on as technicians. (It is unclear how many people it employed.)

    The Mohawk facility was perhaps never set to revitalize Jenkins in the way Smith hoped, anyway. “I would say that a rural community benefits very little from a bitcoin mining facility. In terms of job creation, it’s minimal in a lot of cases,” says Harvey, the consultant. “It's certainly not the savior to a dwindling community.”

    Nonetheless, Smith remains hopeful of salvaging the crypto mining project, with a new partner. “I’m hoping that this gets settled in the way that it should and that somebody comes forward and lets us go through with the vision that we wanted for this region,” he says. “I hope every day that maybe some big company will see that there's a place ready to go in this part of the country.”

    Otherwise, Mohawk’s dalliance with bitcoin mining will become a cautionary tale. “It was very hurtful to see these families lose their income. We were one of the biggest payrolls in Jenkins,” says Smith. “It adds insult to injury that I’m sitting here arguing in court.”

    A Trump Win Could Unleash Dangerous AI

    by: Eric Geller

    Donald Trump's opposition to “woke” safety standards for artificial intelligence would likely mean the dismantling of regulations that protect Americans from misinformation, discrimination, and worse.

    A Trump Win Could Unleash Dangerous AI

    Donald Trump's opposition to “woke” safety standards for artificial intelligence would likely mean the dismantling of regulations that protect Americans from misinformation, discrimination, and worse.
    Donald Trump People Person Electrical Device Microphone Crowd Accessories Formal Wear and Tie
    Photograph: Kevin Dietsch; Getty Images

    If Donald Trump wins the US presidential election in November, the guardrails could come off of artificial intelligence development, even as the dangers of defective AI models grow increasingly serious.

    Trump’s election to a second term would dramatically reshape—and possibly cripple—efforts to protect Americans from the many dangers of poorly designed artificial intelligence, including misinformation, discrimination, and the poisoning of algorithms used in technology like autonomous vehicles.

    The federal government has begun overseeing and advising AI companies under an executive order that President Joe Biden issued in October 2023. But Trump has vowed to repeal that order, with the Republican Party platform saying it “hinders AI innovation” and “imposes Radical Leftwing ideas” on AI development.

    Trump’s promise has thrilled critics of the executive order who see it as illegal, dangerous, and an impediment to America’s digital arms race with China. Those critics include many of Trump’s closest allies, from X CEO Elon Musk and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen to Republican members of Congress and nearly two dozen GOP state attorneys general. Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance, is staunchly opposed to AI regulation.

    “Republicans don't want to rush to overregulate this industry,” says Jacob Helberg, a tech executive and AI enthusiast who has been dubbed “Silicon Valley’s Trump whisperer.”

    But tech and cyber experts warn that eliminating the EO’s safety and security provisions would undermine the trustworthiness of AI models that are increasingly creeping into all aspects of American life, from transportation and medicine to employment and surveillance.

    The upcoming presidential election, in other words, could help determine whether AI becomes an unparalleled tool of productivity or an uncontrollable agent of chaos.

    Oversight and Advice, Hand in Hand

    Biden’s order addresses everything from using AI to improve veterans’ health care to setting safeguards for AI’s use in drug discovery. But most of the political controversy over the EO stems from two provisions in the section dealing with digital security risks and real-world safety impacts.

    One provision requires owners of powerful AI models to report to the government about how they’re training the models and protecting them from tampering and theft, including by providing the results of “red-team tests” designed to find vulnerabilities in AI systems by simulating attacks. The other provision directs the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to produce guidance that helps companies develop AI models that are safe from cyberattacks and free of biases.

    Work on these projects is well underway. The government has proposed quarterly reporting requirements for AI developers, and NIST has released AI guidance documents on risk management, secure software development, synthetic content watermarking, and preventing model abuse, in addition to launching multiple initiatives to promote model testing.

    Supporters of these efforts say they’re essential to maintaining basic government oversight of the rapidly expanding AI industry and nudging developers toward better security. But to conservative critics, the reporting requirement is illegal government overreach that will crush AI innovation and expose developers’ trade secrets, while the NIST guidance is a liberal ploy to infect AI with far-left notions about disinformation and bias that amount to censorship of conservative speech.

    At a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, last December, Trump took aim at Biden’s EO after alleging without evidence that the Biden administration had already used AI for nefarious purposes.

    “When I’m reelected,” he said, “I will cancel Biden’s artificial intelligence executive order and ban the use of AI to censor the speech of American citizens on Day One.”

    Due Diligence or Undue Burden?

    Biden’s effort to collect information about how companies are developing, testing, and protecting their AI models sparked an uproar on Capitol Hill almost as soon as it debuted.

    Congressional Republicans seized on the fact that Biden justified the new requirement by invoking the 1950 Defense Production Act, a wartime measure that lets the government direct private-sector activities to ensure a reliable supply of goods and services. GOP lawmakers called Biden’s move inappropriate, illegal, and unnecessary.

    Conservatives have also blasted the reporting requirement as a burden on the private sector. The provision “could scare away would-be innovators and impede more ChatGPT-type breakthroughs,” Representative Nancy Mace said during a March hearing she chaired on “White House overreach on AI.”

    Helberg says a burdensome requirement would benefit established companies and hurt startups. He also says Silicon Valley critics fear the requirements “are a stepping stone” to a licensing regime in which developers must receive government permission to test models.

    Steve DelBianco, the CEO of the conservative tech group NetChoice, says the requirement to report red-team test results amounts to de facto censorship, given that the government will be looking for problems like bias and disinformation. “I am completely worried about a left-of-center administration … whose red-teaming tests will cause AI to constrain what it generates for fear of triggering these concerns,” he says.

    Conservatives argue that any regulation that stifles AI innovation will cost the US dearly in the technology competition with China.

    “They are so aggressive, and they have made dominating AI a core North Star of their strategy for how to fight and win wars,” Helberg says. “The gap between our capabilities and the Chinese keeps shrinking with every passing year.”

    “Woke” Safety Standards

    By including social harms in its AI security guidelines, NIST has outraged conservatives and set off another front in the culture war over content moderation and free speech.

    Republicans decry the NIST guidance as a form of backdoor government censorship. Senator Ted Cruz recently slammed what he called NIST’s “woke AI ‘safety’ standards” for being part of a Biden administration “plan to control speech” based on “amorphous” social harms. NetChoice has warned NIST that it is exceeding its authority with quasi-regulatory guidelines that upset “the appropriate balance between transparency and free speech.”

    Many conservatives flatly dismiss the idea that AI can perpetuate social harms and should be designed not to do so.

    “This is a solution in search of a problem that really doesn't exist,” Helberg says. “There really hasn’t been massive evidence of issues in AI discrimination.”

    Studies and investigations have repeatedly shown that AI models contain biases that perpetuate discrimination, including in hiring, policing, and health care. Research suggests that people who encounter these biases may unconsciously adopt them.

    Conservatives worry more about AI companies’ overcorrections to this problem than about the problem itself. “There is a direct inverse correlation between the degree of wokeness in an AI and the AI's usefulness,” Helberg says, citing an early issue with Google’s generative AI platform.

    Republicans want NIST to focus on AI’s physical safety risks, including its ability to help terrorists build bioweapons (something Biden’s EO does address). If Trump wins, his appointees will likely deemphasize government research on AI’s social harms. Helberg complains that the “enormous amount” of research on AI bias has dwarfed studies of “greater threats related to terrorism and biowarfare.”

    Defending a “Light-Touch Approach”

    AI experts and lawmakers offer robust defenses of Biden’s AI safety agenda.

    These projects “enable the United States to remain on the cutting edge” of AI development “while protecting Americans from potential harms,” says Representative Ted Lieu, the Democratic cochair of the House’s AI task force.

    The reporting requirements are essential for alerting the government to potentially dangerous new capabilities in increasingly powerful AI models, says a US government official who works on AI issues. The official, who requested anonymity to speak freely, points to OpenAI’s admission about its latest model’s “inconsistent refusal of requests to synthesize nerve agents.”

    The official says the reporting requirement isn’t overly burdensome. They argue that, unlike AI regulations in the European Union and China, Biden’s EO reflects “a very broad, light-touch approach that continues to foster innovation.”

    Nick Reese, who served as the Department of Homeland Security’s first director of emerging technology from 2019 to 2023, rejects conservative claims that the reporting requirement will jeopardize companies’ intellectual property. And he says it could actually benefit startups by encouraging them to develop “more computationally efficient,” less data-heavy AI models that fall under the reporting threshold.

    AI’s power makes government oversight imperative, says Ami Fields-Meyer, who helped draft Biden’s EO as a White House tech official.

    “We’re talking about companies that say they’re building the most powerful systems in the history of the world,” Fields-Meyer says. “The government’s first obligation is to protect people. ‘Trust me, we’ve got this’ is not an especially compelling argument.”

    Experts praise NIST’s security guidance as a vital resource for building protections into new technology. They note that flawed AI models can produce serious social harms, including rental and lending discrimination and improper loss of government benefits.

    Trump’s own first-term AI order required federal AI systems to respect civil rights, something that will require research into social harms.

    The AI industry has largely welcomed Biden’s safety agenda. “What we're hearing is that it’s broadly useful to have this stuff spelled out,” the US official says. For new companies with small teams, “it expands the capacity of their folks to address these concerns.”

    Rolling back Biden’s EO would send an alarming signal that “the US government is going to take a hands off approach to AI safety,” says Michael Daniel, a former presidential cyber adviser who now leads the Cyber Threat Alliance, an information sharing nonprofit.

    As for competition with China, the EO’s defenders say safety rules will actually help America prevail by ensuring that US AI models work better than their Chinese rivals and are protected from Beijing’s economic espionage.

    Two Very Different Paths

    If Trump wins the White House next month, expect a sea change in how the government approaches AI safety.

    Republicans want to prevent AI harms by applying “existing tort and statutory laws” as opposed to enacting broad new restrictions on the technology, Helberg says, and they favor “much greater focus on maximizing the opportunity afforded by AI, rather than overly focusing on risk mitigation.” That would likely spell doom for the reporting requirement and possibly some of the NIST guidance.

    The reporting requirement could also face legal challenges now that the Supreme Court has weakened the deference that courts used to give agencies in evaluating their regulations.

    And GOP pushback could even jeopardize NIST’s voluntary AI testing partnerships with leading companies. “What happens to those commitments in a new administration?” the US official asks.

    This polarization around AI has frustrated technologists who worry that Trump will undermine the quest for safer models.

    “Alongside the promises of AI are perils,” says Nicol Turner Lee, the director of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation, “and it is vital that the next president continue to ensure the safety and security of these systems.”

    US Government Says Relying on Chinese Lithium Batteries Is Too Risky

    by: Zeyi Yang

    A new document shows the Department of Homeland Security is concerned that Chinese investment in lithium batteries to power energy grids will make them a threat to US supply chain security.

    US Government Says Relying on Chinese Lithium Batteries Is Too Risky

    A new document shows the Department of Homeland Security is concerned that Chinese investment in lithium batteries to power energy grids will make them a threat to US supply chain security.
    HOUSTON TEXAS  AUGUST 16 Jupiter Powers battery storage complex is seen Friday Aug. 16 2024 in Houston. The energy...
    Jupiter Powers battery storage complex as seen in Houston, TX.Photograph: Jason Fochtman/Getty Images

    Analysts at the US Department of Homeland Security shared an internal report to local agencies in August, warning them about the economic risks of using Chinese utility storage batteries. It warns that the dependence on Chinese batteries could hurt developing a secure supply chain in the US.

    The document, first obtained by national security transparency nonprofit Property of the People and seen by WIRED, accuses Chinese companies of “using People’s Republic of China state support to quickly and cheaply enter the emerging US utility battery energy storage industry and create supply chain dependencies on China,” and asks that any suspicious activity be reported.

    Specifically, the report alleges three companies—Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL), Build Your Dreams (BYD), and Ruipu Energy Co. Ltd. (REPT)—have “benefited from the various forms of state support and leveraged this to further business strategies for gaining US market share.”

    Currently, CATL and BYD lead the global energy storage battery market by far, with 40 percent and 12 percent market shares, respectively, according to South Korean energy research firm SNE Research. Eight out of the 10 top companies in the industry are from China, so there are few alternatives to turn to when building grid storage.

    The report says it builds on previous documents that analyzed Chinese “state-supported firms’ use of noncompetitive tactics in the electric vehicle and battery supply chains.” DHS did not respond to a request for further comment.

    In 2022, CATL entered a deal with Primergy Solar to build the largest US solar and storage project in Nevada, which came online this year. Its battery products have also been used by Duke Energy, a North Carolina–based utility company, although the latter dropped CATL as a supplier for marine base electricity storage after concerns around national security were raised by, in part, lawmakers in Washington.

    In an emailed statement, Fred Zhang, a CATL spokesperson, rejects the categorization that the firm has relied on state support to gain an edge. “CATL has achieved tremendous growth through continuous innovation, farsighted strategic planning, and a commitment to high-quality products at a reasonable cost,” the statement says.

    BYD and REPT did not reply to WIRED’s request for comment.

    Following efforts to curb Chinese EV companies’ competitiveness, the US government is now also concerned about how domestic utility companies could become too dependent on Chinese batteries for energy storage.

    The US government has in recent years started to catch up in the battery industry. The Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill set out investment tax credits and other economic incentives to build up energy storage capacity in the country. In September it awarded another $3 billion in incentives to projects that boost domestic production of batteries.

    These incentives are also the focus of the DHS report, which alleges that Chinese-based firms are targeting US incentives to further grow their market share. “BYD’s public website as of spring 2023 highlighted how US state incentives can make BYD utility storage systems an attractive investment,” the report claims. (WIRED was unable to find the BYD website referenced in the report.)

    The CATL spokesperson says the company “does not receive any US federal or state incentives.”

    As the US utility grids incorporate more renewable energy sources like solar and wind, it’s essential to build up a battery storage capacity that can store intermittent energy supply for times of heightened demand. And Chinese companies have dominated the global industry of producing lithium batteries for this job. These companies make over 80 percent of the EV battery cells in the world, and they had plans to invest another $2 trillion in 2023 into new production capacities inside and outside the country.

    “Chinese original equipment manufacturers currently supply about 90 percent of the energy storage system batteries, actually a larger share than for EVs,” says Vanessa Witte, a senior research analyst at Wood Mackenzie who focuses on US energy storage. “There is a huge oversupply right now, partly due to softening EV demand, along with a number of Tier 2 and Tier 3 OEMs that have started new manufacturing facilities. The excess supply is a big reason the prices are so low.”

    These batteries are essential for global energy transition, and Chinese battery companies see them as an opportunity to widen their product markets. They’ve become such an important industry that the Chinese central government emphasized their importance for the first time in its annual government report in March.

    The battery supply chain has also emerged as one of the top economic and security concerns around China in the eyes of the US government. The Biden administration has so far raised a 25 percent tariff on Chinese-made lithium-ion EV batteries (and even higher for the EVs they power.) The government has also repeatedly sounded alarms about the national security threats of having Chinese-made equipment and parts in domestic infrastructure.

    So far, the particular conversations around energy storage batteries have mostly surrounded cybersecurity, worried that the components could contain backdoor access for hacking like those that have been suspected in Chinese-made port cranes. Those concerns are “a bit overstated,” Witte says. “There haven’t been any incidents that would lend one to believe the battery management system is sending data to China or could disrupt our infrastructure.”

    There have been several political efforts to restrict the use of Chinese-made batteries in the US. The pentagon will be the first to be banned from buying batteries from six Chinese companies, in an order which will become effective in 2027, but some congressmembers are still asking for CATL and other Chinese companies to be added to trade blacklists, and there’s a bill in Congress that would ban DHS from procuring Chinese batteries.

    But the DHS report shows that the government is also looking at whether the dominance of Chinese batteries can be an economic issue.

    “It is simplistic to see this as just unfair competition due to Chinese government support, as a lot of what China did, such as creating demand for batteries through EV subsidies, is not unlike what we see in the West today,” says Yayoi Sekine, head of energy storage research at BloombergNEF.

    The pricing advantage that Chinese battery companies have are also the results of harsh market competition and a more established battery supply chain in China, she says, and these battery companies are willing to squeeze their own margins in exchange for keeping their market shares. “We think the US government's attempts to support a healthy battery industry domestically has been incredibly generous through the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” says Sekine, “but it may still be challenging to compete on cost.”

    GoPro Hero 13 Black Review: Interchangeable Lenses and Magnetic Mounting

    by: Scott Gilbertson

    The company's latest action camera finally adds magnetic mounting and interchangeable lenses, but the processor and sensor haven't changed in years.

    Review: GoPro Hero 13 Black

    The company's latest action camera finally adds magnetic mounting and interchangeable lenses, but the processor and sensor haven't changed in years.
    WIRED Recommends
    Left The GoPro Hero 13 Black kit a small camera with two additional lenses and accessories. Right Hand holding a small...
    Photograph: Scott Gilbertson; Getty Images
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    Rating:

    7/10

    WIRED
    Interchangeable lens system opens up new shooting possibilities. Better battery life. Magnetic mounting system (finally). Optional USB-C pass-through charging. Excellent Log video support. Much improved HDR mode with HLG.
    TIRED
    Same sensor as previous two generations. Same processor as previous three generations. Low-light/indoor performance is poor compared to competition.

    The new GoPro Hero 13 is the first significant change for GoPro's flagship action camera in years. The company has added an interchangeable lens system, along with new Macro, Ultra Wide, and Anamorphic lenses, plus a set of four neutral density filters. The Hero 13 Black even autodetects which lens is attached and changes settings accordingly.

    While this new system is very slick—and opens up shooting possibilities that simply don't exist in prior models—the sensor and processor remain the same as what we got in the Hero 12 and Hero 11, and in the case of the processor, the Hero 10. In many ways, the GoPro Hero 13 Black feels like it is laying the groundwork for the Hero 14 Black, which makes it a great choice for first-time customers, but hard to recommend as an upgrade.

    Lucky 13

    First the good news: The interchangeable lens system is awesome. There's always been the Max Lens mod, which offers a wider field of view, but the new system is more than just an expansion of the Max Lens. The key is that the camera auto-detects the lens or filter you have attached and automatically adjusts settings.

    You can override these adjustments, but it's nice to pop on one of the four ND filters (four, eight, 16, and 32) and have the camera automatically adjust settings to get a motion-blur effect rather than tweaking things yourself. (Motion blur and Hypersmooth stabilization do not play well together; search the internet for suggestions on getting the best results.)

    GoPro has released three "lens mods” along with the Hero 13 Black: Ultra Wide, Macro, and Anamorphic. I had a lot of fun with the Macro lens, which allows you to use your GoPro for close-ups (close focus distance is 4.33 inches), something no other action camera can pull off. The Ultra Wide is nice for anything where you want a wider field of view, like hiking. Probably the most exciting of these lenses is the Anamorphic, which I was unable to test because it won’t be available until early next year.

    Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

    While the fully kitted-out GoPro with three lenses and four ND filters will cost over $800, you don't have to buy them all. Indeed I suggest avoiding the bundles. Get the GoPro Hero 13 Black for $400 and add lenses down the road if you feel the need.

    The other big news in this release is a magnetic mounting adapter. It functions very similarly to what DJI and Insta360 have long offered and makes it much easier to move the camera between mounts. As with those other systems, GoPro suggests not using the magnetic mount system in high-vibration or high-speed environments.

    Outwardly the Hero 13 Black looks a little different than its predecessor. It thankfully ditches the blue-speckled paint job of the Hero 12 Black and adds a noticeable heat sink to the front, just below the lens. Otherwise, though, it is the same size and even fits in the same Media Mod as previous models.

    The disappointing part of the Hero 13 Black is that it uses the same 27-megapixel sensor and the same processor as the Hero 12, and, for that matter, the Hero 11. Yes, this is the third GoPro in a row with this sensor and processor, which makes this a less compelling upgrade than it would be with a bump in sensor size or output image quality. This means video footage still maxes out at 5.3K resolution, and most other video and photo specs remain unchanged. That also means the sensor's flaws, aka the shoddy low-light performance, are still present.

    Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

    GoPro has a few tricks here and there worth mentioning, though. As someone who likes to handle color grading in postproduction software, the new, improved Log video support is very welcome. I would go so far as to say this is the best Log profile I've seen in an action camera. The Hero 13 Black also has a new slow-motion burst mode which can record 5.3K footage at 120 frames per second. It pulls that off for only five seconds, though, so this is best used for situations like your kid going off a jump on their bike or diving in the pool—quick moments you want to slow down later.

    Another big video improvement is HDR support and hybrid log-gamma (HLG) HDR video. The Hero 12's HDR support was not great, but HLG HDR is a widely used open source HDR format that offers much better compatibility with non-wide-color-gamut displays. The footage also looks much better than the previous version.

    I said above that the Hero 13 is the same size, which is true on the outside, but internally that's not the case. GoPro has enlarged the battery compartment to fit a bigger battery that the company claims will last 10 percent longer than the Hero 12's battery. I found this to be roughly true. Shooting a 4K video with the Hero 13, I consistently coaxed it for about an hour and 45 minutes, sometimes up over the 1:50 mark if there was more ventilation (riding a bike for example).

    GoPro Hero 13 Black: Ultra Wide Lens

    Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

    GoPro Hero 13 Black: Macro Lens

    Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

    The opposite was also true. Shooting through the window of a vehicle for instance, with almost no ventilation, saw recording time go down to around an hour. I have not had a chance to test it in cold weather, but GoPro claims improvements there too. Overall that's about 15 to 20 minutes longer across the board than I generally get with the Hero 12, which is great, but it's well behind the new DJI Action 5 Pro, which had no trouble running well over 2 hours and 30 minutes in the 4K test. The Hero still has the worst battery life in the action camera market and the new battery, while improved, also means your old batteries won't work, adding a sizable cost to those looking to upgrade.

    One interesting battery-related addition to the Hero 13 Black is the new magnetic charge door, which GoPro calls Contacto. It's a USB-C pass-through door with a magnetic charger on the outside, allowing you to power the GoPro using an external battery without keeping the battery door off. There have long been USB-C pass-through doors available from third-party sellers, but this is the only one I'm aware of that's waterproof, which means if you forget you have it on and jump in the ocean, you won't fry your GoPro.

    I should also note that all battery testing was done with GPS disabled because, yes, GPS is back. After removing it to improve the battery life in the Hero 12, GoPro has changed its mind (or at least listened to user feedback, which to judge by Reddit, must have been deafening).

    Lastly, another impressive feature is a new Voice Audio mode that prioritizes your voice, muting ambient sound. It's not nearly as good as what you'll get from a dedicated wireless mic setup, but it's better than previous GoPros. Unfortunately, you still need the Media Mod kit to add a separate mic, which remains my biggest gripe about the GoPro.

    Should You Buy a Hero 13 Black?

    If you're new to action cameras, the Hero 13 Black is worth considering. Despite being two years old, the sensor has the highest resolution video available in an action camera at the time of writing, and it also has the best image stabilization I've tested. The new interchangeable lens system provides options no other action camera can match (though the price will add up).

    However, if you're going to be shooting indoors a lot or at night (think of those soccer games that run well into twilight this time of year), then consider the DJI Action 5 Pro instead (full review coming soon), as it has much better low light and indoor video capabilities.

    If you already have a recent generation GoPro, well, as I noted above, this feels a little like it's just setting the stage for the Hero 14. The successor may have more sweeping changes, like a new sensor and processor, along with these interchangeable lenses, which might be worth the wait.

    12 Best Bookshelf Speakers (2024): Active, Passive, and Hi-Fi

    by: Ryan Waniata

    Soup up your sound with these active and passive speakers. We have picks for every budget.

    The Best Bookshelf Speakers to Blast Your Tunes

    Soup up your sound with these active and passive speakers. We have picks for every budget.

    If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

    Featured in this article

    Best Desktop Speakers
    IK Multimedia iLoud Micro Monitor
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    Best Active/Powered Speakers
    KEF LSX II
    Read more

    Best Passive/Wired Speakers
    Focal Theva No. 1
    Read more

    Best Affordable Passive Speakers
    Sony SS-CS5
    Read more

    Show more
    4 / 12

    Active (aka “powered”) speakers do not require a separate amplifier or receiver. Instead, they have built-in amplification (which powers the speakers and makes the sound loud enough to play through them). These amps are often customized for their specific drivers and cabinetry, which can deliver performance benefits. Modern powered speakers may have other perks, like fully wireless designs (apart from power cables) and wireless streaming from your phone via Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth. They’ll typically provide physical connections for CD players, turntables, subwoofers, and TVs.

    Passive speakers are wired speakers that require a separate amplifier or receiver and speaker cables for playback. This creates more steps since you’ll need to find an amplifier with matching specifications (more on this below). The benefit is that passive speakers are more versatile and dependable, letting you mix and match them in multiple systems and configurations. When treated properly, passive speakers can last for decades.

    Impedance is a specification measured in ohms referring to a speaker’s resistance to electrical current flow. Most passive speakers have a nominal impedance rating (essentially the average impedance) of 4, 6, or 8 ohms; the lower the number the less resistance to electrical current. You can think of it like plumbing pipes: the wider the pipe, the less opposition to pressure you get and the more flow, or electrical current, you’ll need. The upshot is that 4-ohm speakers are the hardest to drive, requiring the most power. Much is made about impedance in audiophile circles, but most good amplifiers and receivers are rated for both 4-ohm to 8-ohm speaker pairs, with appropriate wattage ratings to match. For 6-ohm speakers, you’ll generally want an amplifier with a 6-ohm or 4-ohm impedance rating and enough power to match the speaker’s requirements (available in the manual or website).

    Speaker power requirements: Passive speakers include specifications for their minimum and maximum power requirements, measured in watts. Without getting too deep into the weeds about amplification types and power efficiency, a good rule of thumb is to pick an amplifier with a wattage rating per channel that closely matches your speaker’s power requirements for its nominal impedance rating. If you’re having trouble finding the right match, you’ll generally want an amplifier that meets your speaker’s minimum power requirements for its nominal impedance rating.

    Tethered connection options: Most modern amplifiers and active speakers offer multiple wired connections like analog input (RCA or 3.5 mm), digital optical input for CD players or TVs, and a subwoofer output for connecting a powered subwoofer. Many new systems connect to TVs over HDMI ARC too, letting you control basics like power and volume with your TV remote. They may also offer a phono input for turntables, though many of our favorite turntables come with a built-in phono preamp (or you can purchase a separate phono preamp as needed).

    Wireless connection options: Nearly all active speakers—and many modern amplifiers—support Bluetooth. Wi-Fi connectivity is also increasingly standard, letting you access services like Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, AirPlay, and Google Cast. Wi-Fi is generally preferred over Bluetooth for its improved sound quality and conveniences like uninterrupted streaming and expanded wireless range.

    Everything You Can Do From Google Chrome’s Address Bar (Besides Run Searches)

    by: David Nield

    Chrome’s omnibox is not just for typing out URLs or searching Google. Use it to take notes, write emails, and chat with Gemini.

    Everything You Can Do From the Chrome Address Bar (Besides Run Searches)

    Chrome’s omnibox is not just for typing out URLs or searching Google. Use it to take notes, write emails, and chat with Gemini.
    Illustration of a magician's hand waving the Chrome address bar like a wand and several utilities popping up
    Illustration: Jacqui VanLiew; Getty Images

    It tends to really be used only by developers, but the address bar and search box up at the top of the Google Chrome interface has an official name: the omnibox. It reflects the multipurpose capabilities of this little text field, as it's able to do much more than look up web addresses and run searches on Google.

    When you know about everything the omnibox can do, you can save time jumping between different apps and sites, and get things done more quickly. What's more, Google is constantly adding new features to the omnibox. Most recently, as you might expect, the company added an integration with Gemini AI.

    Here are a few of our favorites—just remove the quotes around the text examples below to get the code you need to type into the omnibox.

    Chat With Gemini

    We've just mentioned the most recent upgrade to the Chrome omnibox, so we may as well start here: Type out "@gemini" in the address bar, then a space, then your prompt for the chatbot. Hit Enter, and the query will be run in Google Gemini. Chrome will use whatever flavor of Gemini is included with your Google account (so Gemini Advanced, if you're a paying user).

    Carry Out Conversions

    Any kind of conversion you need, the all-powerful omnibox can take care of for you: Turn kilometers into miles, or dollars into euros, or days into months. All you have to do is type out the desired conversion in a way that makes sense. Chrome is pretty good at working out what you're trying to do, so for example, you can type “£34 in us dollars” and it will know you’re looking for a conversion. You should immediately see the result appear underneath—you don't need to hit Enter.

    Run Basic Calculations

    On a related note, you can run simple calculations from the Chrome omnibox as well, no need to press Enter. Anything like "24*8" or "352+91" will instantly show a result underneath—as will "24*8-352+91"—and you can use brackets if you need part of the sum worked out first. If you do press Enter afterwards, the full Chrome calculator opens up.

    Check the Weather

    Want to know the weather, anywhere? Chrome will tell you.Courtesy of David Nield

    Chrome can report on live weather conditions from the omnibox. Just type "weather" (no need to press Enter) to see a mini description of the current conditions in wherever you are. Note that this only gives the most accurate result if Chrome has access to your current location. Add a town, city, or postal code on the end to see conditions in that place, and hit Enter after your query for a more detailed forecast.

    Search Your Bookmarks

    You can search through your Chrome bookmarks right from the omnibox, without having to open up the browser’s integrated Bookmark Manager. You do need to type out the name of one of your bookmark folders first, so Chrome knows what you're trying to do, and you can then write any word or phrase to see instant results for pages saved in that bookmarks folder.

    Make Notes in Chrome

    If you need to quickly get some thoughts down in Chrome and you don't want to launch a separate program, the code "data:text/html, <html contenteditable>" followed by Enter will give you a blank tab you can type into. It's not the most advanced of text editors—there's no formatting and no auto-save—but it works well as a quick solution for jotting down notes.

    Get Quick Definitions

    If you're unsure what a particular word means, Chrome can tell you, and you don't need to leave the page you're currently on to find out the definition. Type "define", then a space, then the word you want the meaning for, and a basic definition pops up underneath. To get back to the URL of the page you were viewing, press Esc to remove the definition.

    The Chrome omnibox can define any word for you.Courtesy of David Nield

    Create New Documents

    You can quickly create new documents, spreadsheets, or presentations in Google's online office suite by typing "docs.new", "sheets.new", or "slides.new" into the omnibox. When you press Enter, the new file is created in the Google Drive for the current Google account. To create a new file in a new window (leaving the current one alone), use Shift+Enter after your command.

    There's a whole suite of things .new shortcuts can launch, and Google continues to add new capabilities.

    Start New Emails

    There's a similar trick for creating new emails in the default email client on your computer: Type "mailto:" and hit Enter to open a blank email. You can also prepopulate the To: field with the destination address by typing it after the colon, if you know it. To set the default email client on Windows, choose Apps > Default Apps from Settings; over on macOS, pick Mail > Settings > General from Apple Mail.

    Run Instant Google Searches

    On many Google searches, you get the answer above the list of links on the results page. These “instant” searches work in Chrome too. Ask about facts (like the height of the Eiffel Tower or the mass of Jupiter), celebrity ages, the days until a certain date, current stock prices for a company, the size of countries, the authors of books, and so on.

    Vizio 5.1 Soundbar SE Review: Pretty Good, Hilariously Cheap

    by: Parker Hall

    This Vizio soundbar system brings the sound of the movies to your living room, and it costs less than $250.

    Review: Vizio 5.1 Soundbar SE (2024)

    This Vizio soundbar system brings the sound of the movies to your living room, and it costs less than $250.
    WIRED Recommends
    Different views of the Vizio 5.1 Soundbar system including a closeup of the subwoofer the set and overhead view of the...
    Photograph: Parker Hall; Getty Images
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    Rating:

    8/10

    WIRED
    Cheap. Easy to set up. HDMI eARC connection means that it works with every modern TV remote. Compact main bar and subwoofer are discreet. Bold simulated DTS:X and Dolby Atmos sound, even without upfiring speakers. Easy to mount to Vizio TVs.
    TIRED
    Wired satellite speakers can be annoying to place, depending on your space. No optical input for older TVs.

    It shouldn’t be this cheap to thoroughly enjoy the sound of John Wick as he breaks a real-life NBA player’s neck with a book. Yet for around $200 (a penny less if on sale), you can get a 5.1 soundbar system from Vizio that lets you hear the subtle crack of his vertebrae as a mildly stabbed Keanu Reeves twists his leather-bound enemy just so, in the intro to the franchise’s third installment.

    This kind of immersion used to cost you hundreds more, if not thousands. Now, just plug in a single HDMI cable to an eARC port of a chosen screen (or in my case, the 130-inch Hisense laser projector I'm also testing) and you can be drawn further into the action than you possibly could with a single central soundbar.

    As long as you’re ok with a few stray wires from the surround speakers to the subwoofer, it’s as easy as setting this system up, plugging it in, and enjoying your favorite content with new immersion. Been on the fence about getting a soundbar because you’re saving up for a full-blown home theater? Start here and you’ll buy yourself a long time to upgrade.

    You’re Surrounded

    A slim, nondescript main soundbar that’s 33 inches long pairs with small wired surround speakers and a wireless subwoofer to create this 5.1 system. The only aftermarket thing you might need is a pair of stands for the rear speakers, unless you plan to mount them to the wall (it has included mounting holes for this).

    One benefit that is exclusive to those who have Vizio TVs is the quick fit system, which allows you to pop this bar easily onto the bottom of compatible late-model Vizio TVs. This makes this bar a particularly good choice if you are also considering a TV like the latest Vizio 4K model we just reviewed (7/10, WIRED Recommends).

    Photograph: Parker Hall

    The main downside to this system, and the reason why it costs significantly less than other options I’ve tested that produce sound of this quality, is those wires. They’re about 20 feet long, which is long enough to work in most average living rooms or apartments, but having to route cables is much more annoying than wireless systems.

    Once you get it set up, it’s as easy as plugging in a single HDMI cable from the main bar to your TV, at which time the magic of eARC takes over and you can use the bar to your heart's content. As long as your TV is new enough to have ARC or eARC, you can use your TV remote (or in my case, a TV and then laser projector remote) to adjust the volume of the soundbar without having to touch the Vizio remote that’s included.

    That remote does let you set things like sound settings and volume levels, so I recommend that you use it at least once to set up everything in your space. You can also control the soundbar via the Vizio app on your phone, if you pair to it via Bluetooth. If you go Vizio-to-Vizio, you also get an integrated audio settings menu on the TV, so you don’t have to mess with the app or the remote. That's nice, but you're probably gonna set and forget this anyway.

    A Dive Bar

    The best part of the Vizio 5.1 bar, in fact, is how good it sounds with minimal intervention. You just plug it in, press Play, and enjoy surround sound that's shockingly dynamic and immersive for a cheap soundbar that should sound tinny and awful.

    The small surround speakers are the real highlight, more than powerful enough to give me a nice immersive experience when watching action flicks like John Wick or Master and Commander, where cannonballs whiz past my head even in standard 5.1.

    Photograph: Parker Hall

    The Vizio 5.1 bar supports DTS:X and Dolby Atmos, but it doesn’t actually have up-firing speakers to bounce sound off your ceiling and do a “real” height channel. Instead, Vizio uses virtualization to simulate these channels. It’s hilariously convincing for a bar this cheap, and a testament to how good audio processing has gotten in general.

    Can you tell the difference between this and more expensive bars from other brands, or even from Vizio itself? Totally. This set sounds a bit boxier in the midrange, and it doesn't have the same channel separation or depth of flavor you really want when listening to music—I'd stick to bookshelf speakers.

    Photograph: Parker Hall

    The subwoofer adds a lot of low end, but it won't ever actually rumble your seats, unless you live in a derelict building. “Theater-like” is a really apt descriptor of this system. As an approximation of a high-end experience for less than a quarter the cost of higher-end Dolby Atmos-enabled soundbar systems, it does pretty darn well.

    When compared to what you have in your new screen, this Vizio 5.1 setup utterly blows standard TV speakers out of the water. I'd even rather have this system than many stand-alone bars, which simulate surround sound, but don't perform as well as a bar with actual satellite speakers.

    As I have come to expect from Vizio in this space, its cheap soundbar system remains my favorite new model this side of $500. It's just hard to expect more from a product that does its job reasonably well for this cheap. If I had just bought a cheap TV and wanted to experience surround sound, this is where I'd start.

    The 7 Best Blackout Curtains, Tested and Reviewed

    by: Molly Higgins

    We tested many options on bright windows to see which curtains actually give us a dark night’s sleep.

    The Best Blackout Curtains

    We tested many options on bright windows to see which curtains actually give us a dark night’s sleep.

    If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

    Featured in this article

    Best Overall
    Pottery Barn Peace & Quiet Noise-Reducing Blackout Curtain
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    Runner-Up
    West Elm Worn Velvet Blackout Curtain
    Read more

    A Theater-Grade Curtain
    Sun Zero Oslo Theater Grade Extreme 100 Percent Blackout Rod Pocket Curtain Panel
    Read more

    Best Portable
    Amazon Basics Portable Travel Window Blackout Curtain Shade
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    How Cells Resist the Pressure of the Deep Sea

    by: Yasemin Saplakoglu

    Cell membranes from comb jellies reveal a new kind of adaptation to the deep sea: curvy lipids that conform to an ideal shape under pressure.

    How Cells Resist the Pressure of the Deep Sea

    Cell membranes from comb jellies reveal a new kind of adaptation to the deep sea: curvy lipids that conform to an ideal shape under pressure.
    Image may contain Animal and Sea Life
    Photograph: Jacob Winnikoff

    The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.

    The bottom of the ocean is cold, dark, and under extreme pressure. It is not a place suited to the physiology of us surface dwellers: At the deepest point, the pressure of 36,200 feet of seawater is greater than the weight of an elephant on every square inch of your body. Yet Earth’s deepest places are home to life uniquely suited to these challenging conditions. Scientists have studied how the bodies of some large animals, such as anglerfish and blobfish, have adapted to withstand the pressure. But far less is known about how cells and molecules stand up to the squeezing, crushing weight of thousands of feet of seawater.

    “The animals that live down in the deep sea are not ones that live in surface waters,” said Itay Budin, who studies the biochemistry of cell membranes at the University of California, San Diego. “They’re clearly biologically specialized. But we know very little, at the molecular level, about what is actually determining that specialization.”

    In a recent study published in Science, researchers took the deepest look yet at how cells have adapted to life in the abyss. In 2018, Budin met Steve Haddock, a deep-sea biologist, and they combined forces to investigate whether cell membranes—specifically, the lipid molecules that membranes are made of—could help explain how animals have come to thrive in such a high-pressure environment.

    To find out, they turned to comb jellies, the simple, diaphanous animals that Haddock studies at California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). Led by his student Jacob Winnikoff, the interdisciplinary team discovered that the membranes of comb jellies that reside in the depths are made of lipid molecules with completely different shapes than those of their shallow-water counterparts. Three-quarters of the lipids in the deep-sea comb jellies were plasmalogens, a type of curved lipid that is rarer in surface animals. In the pressure of the deep sea, the curvy molecule conforms to the exact shape needed to support a sturdy yet dynamic cell membrane.

    “It’s an amazing paper … with quite profound implications,” said Douglas Bartlett, who studies how microbes sustain life at depth and pressure at the University of California, San Diego and was not involved in the new study. “They provide another explanation for how the lipids of deep-sea animals, and likely deep-sea microbes and a range of organisms, are adapted in a way that’s pressure-specific.”

    To study the cell membranes of deep-sea animals, the biochemist Itay Budin (center) joined forces with marine biologists Steve Haddock (right) and Jacob Winnikoff (left).

    Photographs: From left: Tamrynn Clegg; Geoffroy Tobe; John Lee

    “They are looking into an area that, to a large degree, has not been explored,” said Sol Gruner, who researches molecular biophysics at Cornell University; he was consulted for the study but was not a co-author.

    Plasmalogen lipids are also found in the human brain, and their role in deep-sea membranes could help explain aspects of cell signaling. More immediately, the research unveils a new way that life has adapted to the most extreme conditions of the deep ocean.

    Insane in the Membrane

    The cells of all life on Earth are encircled by fatty molecules known as lipids. If you put some lipids in a test tube and add water, they automatically line themselves up back to back: The lipids’ greasy, water-hating tails commingle to form an inner layer, and their water-loving heads arrange together to form the outer portions of a thin membrane. “It’s just like oil and water separating in a dish,” Winnikoff said. “It’s universal to lipids, and it’s what makes them work.”

    For a cell, an outer lipid membrane serves as a physical barrier that, like the external wall of a house, provides structure and keeps a cell’s insides in. But the barrier can’t be too solid: It’s studded with proteins, which need some wiggle room to carry out their various cellular jobs, such as ferrying molecules across the membrane. And sometimes a cell membrane pinches off to release chemicals into the environment and then fuses back together again.

    For a membrane to be healthy and functional, it must therefore be sturdy, fluid, and dynamic at the same time. “The membranes are balancing right on the edge of stability,” Winnikoff said. “Even though it has this really well-defined structure, all the individual molecules that make up the sheets on either side—they’re flowing around each other all the time. It’s actually a liquid crystal.”

    One of the emergent properties of this structure, he said, is that the middle of the membrane is highly sensitive to both temperature and pressure—much more so than other biological molecules such as proteins, DNA or RNA. If you cool down a lipid membrane, for example, the molecules move more slowly, “and then eventually they’ll just lock together,” Winnikoff said, as when you put olive oil in the fridge. “Biologically, that’s generally a bad thing.” Metabolic processes halt; the membrane can even crack and leak its contents.

    To avoid this, many cold-adapted animals have membranes composed of a blend of lipid molecules with slightly different structures to keep the liquid crystal flowing, even at low temperatures. Because high pressure also slows a membrane’s flow, many biologists assumed that deep-sea membranes were built the same way.

    But it turns out these researchers weren’t getting the full picture. It would take an unexpected collaboration between biochemists and marine biologists, and more advanced technology, to see that deep-sea membranes had evolved a different way of going with the flow.

    Going Deep

    Comb jellies, or ctenophores, are voracious predators in fragile bodies. They are the largest animals that swim with cilia, which are lined up in rows known as combs, and they feed on a wide range of prey. Genetic evidence suggests that they were the first organisms to branch off the animal tree on their own evolutionary path. Though they resemble jellyfish in some ways, humans are actually more closely related to jellyfish than ctenophores are. And they have successfully colonized all kinds of ocean habitats, from surface waters to ocean trenches, and from the tropics to the poles.

    The researchers collected comb jellies by robot arm when exploring the deep ocean with ROV Ventana (left) and by hand when scuba diving in surface waters (right).

    Photographs: Jacob Winnikoff

    You would expect such a wide-ranging group to be adaptable, and indeed comb jellies from the deep are built differently than those that live near the ocean’s surface. “You collect the deep guys, and you bring them up to the surface, and they just fall apart,” Bartlett said. “They just melt away. It’s really quite dramatic.” Similarly, if the ones adapted to shallow water end up at depth, they beat their cilia faster and faster, and eventually die. But no one really knew the molecular differences that separated them.

    In 2018, Haddock, an expert on comb jellies, attended a conference on the origin of eukaryotes. After watching Budin present research on cell membranes’ response to temperature, he approached the lipid expert. Haddock had a graduate student, Winnikoff, who wanted to study adaptations to extreme pressure. It was known that lipids are sensitive to pressure, so cell membranes were a prime target for investigation. They decided to collaborate.

    Haddock, Budin, and Winnikoff started by collecting comb jellies from different parts of the ocean. In scuba gear, Winnikoff carefully coaxed comb jellies from Monterey Bay’s surface waters into jars. From one of MBARI’s oceanographic vessels, he helped operate a deep-sea robot to collect comb jellies from depths of 12,000 feet. To control for the effects of the cold temperatures in the deep sea, he and Budin asked friends who were on their own expedition to gather surface comb jellies from frigid Arctic waters. In total, the team collected 66 animals from 17 related species.

    Comb jellies have adapted to ocean habitats from the surface to the deep sea and from the cold poles to the warm tropics. Four of the 17 study species, clockwise from upper left: Beroe cucumis, common in shallow Arctic waters; the shallow-water Leucothea pulchra; Beroe abyssicola, a deep-water relative of B. cucumis; and an undescribed shallow-water mertensiid.

    Photograph: Jacob Winnikoff

    By the time the molecular part of the project was set to begin, the pandemic had hit. So Winnikoff set up an experiment in his garage. Using a fluorescence spectrometer, he sent rays of ultraviolet light into test tubes filled with small globs of membrane material from the creatures they’d collected. The results puzzled him. The deep-sea membranes didn’t become more fluid as he raised the temperature—a response considered universal among lipid membranes.

    So he and Budin consulted Gruner, the former director of Cornell’s particle accelerator. If they really wanted to know what was happening in the membranes, Gruner said, they would need powerful, high-energy X-rays. And he knew the perfect source.

    Under Pressure

    Buried 50 feet beneath the main athletic fields at Cornell is a synchrotron: a particle accelerator that uses a high-frequency electric field and a low-frequency magnetic field to speed up charged particles. Part of the facility, which Gruner fought to establish, may as well have been designed for studying deep-sea cell membranes. Its small-angle X-ray scattering operation, which opened in 2020, can not only distinguish the finer details and shapes of molecules such as lipids, but also increase and decrease the pressure they’re under.

    The team experienced some pressure, too, as they had to endure late nights to make the most of their limited time at the facility. The powerful X-rays they shot at their lipid samples revealed the clearest picture yet of cell membranes from the abyss. The deep-sea comb jellies had membrane lipids that, at our standard atmospheric pressure, have a curvier shape than those in surface cell membranes. The animals had especially increased production of the group of lipids known as plasmalogens.

    “In these deep-sea comb jellies, [plasmalogens] can make up three-quarters of all the lipids, and we’re talking about all the membrane lipids in the entire body of the animal, which is kind of crazy,” Winnikoff said. “We did a lot of checks to make sure that wasn’t a mistake.”

    At the surface, a plasmalogen has a small phosphate head and a pair of wide, flaring tails, resembling a badminton shuttlecock, he said. But at high pressure, the tails squeeze together to form the necessary sturdy yet dynamic structure.

    “They start their lipids at a different shape,” Budin said. “So when you compress them, they still maintain the right Goldilocks shape that you see in our own cells, but at these extreme pressures.” Budin and Winnikoff named this novel modification “homeocurvature adaptation.”

    Illustration: Mark Belan for Quanta Magazine

    Taking a plasmalogen membrane to the deep sea is like pushing down on a spring, Bartlett said. At the surface, when the spring’s tension is released, it extends dramatically. “That’s when you can imagine the cells, their membranes, falling apart.” Meanwhile, if a surface membrane with straighter lipids is brought down to the deep, it compresses too much and becomes too rigid to function properly.

    Notably, curvy plasmalogens were not present in comb jellies from the cold, shallow waters of the Arctic. “The composition of the membrane almost restricts the organisms to a particular pressure range,” said Peter Meikle, a lipid biologist who works on plasmalogens at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute in Australia and was not involved in the study.

    But Budin wanted to see these lipids in action, and something occurred to him during a late session at the synchrotron. “In the middle of the night when you’re deliriously tired,” he said, sometimes you have a good idea. He stumbled on a paper with an intriguing approach to studying lipids. The authors had engineered Escherichia coli bacteria to produce plasmalogens in their membranes instead of their normal lipids. Budin realized that his team could similarly coax the bacteria to produce more plasmalogens and pressurize them to see how the membranes held up in living cells.

    Following the paper’s methods, they showed that the bacteria with plasmalogen membranes could indeed better tolerate pressure than typical ones. These experimental membranes were made up of only 20 percent plasmalogens, but it was “enough to make a difference,” Winnikoff said.

    Bartlett was impressed that the effect of the curved lipid shapes occurred in such unrelated species. “What is likely to come out of this is that we’ll find that this principle of homeocurvature adaptation will become a universal property of life,” he said.

    Curvy Flexibility

    Plasmalogens aren’t limited to the deep sea. They’re also found to varying degrees in other organisms, including humans. The percentage of plasmalogens within humans depends on the cell type. In the liver, plasmalogens make up 5 percent of phospholipids. In muscles, they can range between 20 percent and 40 percent. And in the brain, they make up about 60 percent.

    In fact, the deterioration of plasmalogens has been linked to neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. “The evidence suggests that the plasmalogens are more protective,” said Meikle, who studies plasmalogens because of their links to mammalian health.

    Winnikoff speculates that plasmalogens might give nerve cells the right flexibility for their communication needs. To send signals, neurons fill cellular sacs with neurotransmitters; then those sacs fuse with the cell membrane to release the signaling compounds on to the next neuron. Maybe plasmalogens’ curvy structure makes that possible, Winnikoff suggested.

    Meikle likes the idea. “Certainly, they’re the primary sort of cone shape that allows membranes to form those types of curvatures,” he said. As studies better understand the role of lipids in membrane function, the findings could be relevant for a broader range of membranes.

    “They’ve opened up more questions than they’ve answered,” Gruner said. “But hopefully it will catalyze people to start thinking about and doing more experiments going deeper into the subject.”

    Indeed Winnikoff, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, is looking into how universal this lipid adaptation mechanism is across different organisms. He’s started experiments to figure out whether organisms found at hydrothermal vents—deep ocean areas where magma and seawater meet—have similar adaptations.

    What would be really interesting, he added, would be to look at archaea, the third branch of life. Archaea lipids behave differently than those found in bacteria and eukaryotes: They follow different chemistry, Winnikoff said. “Do they follow the same physics?”

    Disclosure: Itay Budin has received funding from the Simons Foundation, which also funds Quanta Magazine, which is editorially independent. Simons Foundation funding decisions have no influence on our coverage.

    Protesters Say Uber and Lyft Are Still Failing Their Blind Passengers

    by: Boone Ashworth, Caroline Haskins

    At a protest in San Francisco, blind Uber and Lyft users claim that the ride-hailing companies aren’t doing enough to prevent drivers from turning them away.

    Protesters Say Uber and Lyft Are Still Failing Their Blind Passengers

    At a protest in San Francisco, blind Uber and Lyft users claim that the ride-hailing companies aren’t doing enough to prevent drivers from turning them away.
    Protesters are seen outside of the Uber HQ on October 15 2024 in San Francisco CA.
    Protesters are seen outside Uber headquarters in San Francisco on October 15.Photograph: Boone Ashworth

    Last summer, when Krystal White was visiting Houston for a National Federation of the Blind convention, she claims she had to hide her guide dog named Gage in order to get an Uber from the airport.

    This is a frequent problem, she explains.“I've had them drive right past me, and I've had neighbors go, ‘I think that was your Uber driver,’” White says. “And I'm like, ‘oh great.’ So I've missed appointments, I've missed my daughter's play at school.

    “It makes you feel isolated—like it's all your fault, you're blind. And you can't get anywhere when you're trying so hard to do so.”

    White, from Boise in Idaho, was among the protesters who gathered on October 15 outside the San Francisco headquarters of Uber and Lyft to demand that the companies take major steps to stop discrimination against people with disabilities on their platforms—particularly against visually impaired people who use guide dogs or white canes.

    Many had personal experiences in which they say Uber or Lyft drivers rejected them as soon as they pulled up. Juanita Herrera, from Southern California, was at the protest with her 4-year-old daughter. She says when she was pregnant years ago, she got off work late and didn’t want to take public transportation, so she called an Uber.

    “The driver showed up, saw my dog, and started getting aggressive. He was like, ‘no dogs.’ And I'm like, ‘but it's a service animal.’ He just kept saying ‘no dogs,’” she says. “I'm visibly pregnant at the time, right? He just kind of left me stranded. He then drove off. He wouldn’t cancel the trip until 15 minutes later.”

    On another occasion in 2021, a Lyft driver refused to stop while Herrera’s young daughter was in a car seat, because of her guide dog, Jaden. The driver said she didn’t take pets. Herrera says the driver claimed no knowledge of Lyft’s policy on guide dogs and that when she still refused to take them, Herrera told the driver she would report the incident. The driver got very angry, accused Herrera of trying to get her fired, and then drove off, she says. Herrera says she filed a report and nothing came of it.

    At the protest, people said that the companies need to institute a “zero-tolerance policy” for discriminatory drivers who turn away passengers with visual impairments. They also said that ride-hailing companies need to better educate their drivers on how to accommodate people with visual impairments. The protest was organized by the National Federation of the Blind and took place on White Cane Awareness Day, meant to spotlight the needs of people with visual impairments.

    Uber did not respond to a request for comment. A Lyft spokesperson told WIRED that “discrimination has no place in the Lyft community.”

    “We strive to provide an inclusive and accessible platform for riders, including those who rely on service animals,” the Lyft spokesperson says. “We continually update our practices to improve accessibility for riders and are proud to be working directly with advocacy organizations in the community.”

    Frank Maestas, who was at the same protest, says he had a similar experience in Houston. His would-be Uber driver refused to give him a ride upon seeing his white cane. “An Uber driver told me that he cannot take me because he was afraid I'd get hurt going into his vehicle or coming out,” Maestas says. “So he refused me a ride.”

    Uber and Lyft have been challenged in court and by activists for years on their alleged failure to fully cooperate with the Americans With Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination based on disability in public and commercial transportation—which could mean lack of accessible vehicles, a higher price for services, or an outright refusal of services.

    Uber and Lyft are plagued by two main issues: They often have too few wheelchair-accessible vehicles, to the point where wait times for passengers are egregiously long. And in some cases, disabled passengers claim a car isn’t available at all. Uber’s wheelchair-accessible service is listed as available in some cities in the US and the UK. Neither Uber nor Lyft make the number of wheelchair-accessible vehicles public.

    When WIRED journalists tried to book one with Uber in central London, they were listed as “unavailable.” (Lyft does not operate in London.) In San Francisco, there was more luck—two vehicles were available on Uber as wheelchair accessible—while Lyft does not list wheelchair-accessible vehicles available nearby, simply a message that it will be a much longer wait period.

    Protesters have long claimed that drivers will decide to not pick up passengers with a visible disability, which includes people who require a wheelchair or guide dog, and do not face repercussions. Passengers say that when they report incidents like this to Uber or Lyft, they often go ignored.

    A Lyft spokesman told WIRED that, “while there is a notable shortage of the types of vehicles needed on the road today, we will continue to push for solutions that make rideshare as accessible as possible for everyone.” (Lyft did not elaborate on how it plans to bridge the lack of available vehicles.)

    Michelle Barlak, public relations manager for The Seeing Eye, which provides guide dogs for people with visual impairments, tells WIRED that the organization has received “frequent and increasing reports of rideshare access denials from Seeing Eye dog handlers.” A survey by the nonprofit Guide Dogs for the Blind found 83 percent of members said they had been denied rides.

    Both Uber and Lyft offer in-app options for people to specify that they’re traveling with a pet, which usually involves paying slightly more. But since guide dogs aren’t pets, people with visual impairments cannot be required to use this option.

    A Lyft spokesperson tells WIRED that by 2025, the company will be launching a “service animal opt-in feature,” which it says will let passengers “disclose that they travel with a service animal when requesting a ride.”

    Uber, which did not respond to a request for comment, allows passengers to specify via in-app settings if they are traveling with a service animal.

    “According to the ADA, rideshare drivers cannot refuse access based on the size, weight, or breed of a dog, allergies, fear of dogs, or cultural/religious objections,” Barlak tells WIRED.

    At the protest, White argues that guide dogs are not at all comparable to pets, which drivers may fear are unruly or poorly behaved. However, some drivers don’t see them any differently.

    “Guide dogs are $75,000 dogs—they're not gonna go to the bathroom in your car or get sick in your car,” White says.

    Barlak says that Uber and Lyft need to make it easier for visually impaired passengers to report difficulties using their services and for the companies to better educate their drivers on the needs of blind passengers.

    Michael Forzano, a protester who lives in New York and uses a guide dog, claims that on three occasions, drivers have slammed the door on him, driven away when his hands were still on the car, and almost ran over his guide dog’s paws. After reporting these incidents, he says, nothing has happened.

    On one other occasion, an Uber driver in Orlando refused Forzano and his girlfriend service when they entered the car with his guide dog. He says the driver turned on loud music and verbally assaulted them until they ended the trip. “I waited over an hour for the police to arrive,” Forzano says. “The police sided with the driver, and I'm still working through the process of that.”

    People who use wheelchairs also face challenges using Uber and Lyft. Joe Rappaport—communications and strategy director at Taxis for All, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on helping wheelchair users get access to accessible taxis and rideshare cars, and executive director at Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled—has been central to the effort to make sure Uber and Lyft have enough wheelchair accessible cars in New York City.

    Rappaport says that there are many people with mobility issues who rely on Uber and Lyft, especially since they remove the burden of flagging down a car in a place like Manhattan.

    Rappaport says the companies have largely had the same accessibility issues of New York City’s yellow cab industry, which has also been scrutinized for having too few wheelchair-accessible vehicles.

    “You've got these companies who claim to be at the edge, introducing new technology and new ways of doing things, but in the end they're the same old bad service without a thought about accessibility,” Rappaport says.

    In 2018, Uber and Lyft settled a lawsuit filed in New York in which for-hire vehicle companies were required to have a quarter of their rides be in wheelchair-accessible cars by mid-2023. Uber and Lyft claimed that the accessibility mandate was “seriously flawed” and “arbitrary.” The settlement carved out a compromise: At least 80 percent of its requests for wheelchair-accessible cars would arrive in under 10 minutes by mid-2021.

    Rappaport says that this lawsuit has definitely had a positive effect on ride accessibility in New York City—but anecdotally, he says it’s still next to impossible to get accessible vehicles in places like Staten Island or the Bronx, even if it’s easier in places like Park Slope or Manhattan.

    Legal efforts across the country aiming to hold the companies to account have also had mixed results. In 2020, Lyft had to settle a separate lawsuit with the Department of Justice, which charged the company with not accommodating riders with wheelchairs or walkers. Lyft made payments to affected individuals in the suit but didn’t admit to any wrongdoing. Similarly, Uber had to pay millions to settle a 2022 Department of Justice case that accused it of violating the ADA by overcharging people with disabilities.

    “What's most frustrating about it is that when these platforms work, they are a real game changer for blind people,” says Chris Danielsen, director of public relations at the National Federation of the Blind. “The reason we know this is an issue is because we use these platforms all the time. They really are a game changer for us.”

    Since the October 15 rally, Herrera says that she has been denied service again. “It happens all the time,” she says. “Uber and Lyft have to take a more drastic approach. How are you letting people get away with breaking the law? That’s what I don’t understand.”

    12 Best Retro Game Consoles (2024): Evercade, Polymega, Analogue Pocket, Arcade1Up, and More

    by: Simon Hill

    From the stylish Evercade to the old-school Sega Genesis Mini, these machines will have you bleeping, blooping, and blasting back to the good old days.

    These Retro Gaming Consoles Deliver a Dose of Nostalgia

    From the stylish Evercade to the old-school Sega Genesis Mini, these machines will have you bleeping, blooping, and blasting back to the good old days.

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    Featured in this article

    Best Overall
    Evercade VS
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    For Cartridge Collectors
    Polymega
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    Best Handheld
    Evercade EXP
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    For Atari Fans
    Atari 2600+
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    4 / 14

    14 Gifts for People Who Are Perpetually Cold (2024)

    by: Adrienne So, Pia Ceres

    From tiny mugs to a backyard hot tub, these picks will make your loved ones feel warm and fuzzy—inside and out.

    14 Gifts for People Who Are Perpetually Cold

    From tiny mugs to a backyard hot tub, these picks will make your loved ones feel warm and fuzzy—inside and out.

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    Featured in this article

    Tiny Hot Cups for Sharing
    Yeti 6-oz Stackable Cups
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    Cozy Flannel Sheets
    The Company Store Legends Hotel Velvet Flannel Sheet Set
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    A Backyard Hot Tub
    Intex PureSpa Bubble Massage Inflatable Hot Tub
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    The Best Tea Brewer Mug
    The Tea Spot Mountain Tea Tumbler
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    4 / 14

    Analogue3D’s Retro Console Proves the N64 Controller Was the Worst Ever

    by: Matt Kamen

    Some things are better left in the past.

    Analogue3D’s Retro Console Proves the N64 Controller Was the Worst Ever

    Some things are better left in the past.
    Electronics
    Photography Courtesy of Nintendo

    I'm here to make friends, bask in the kind, accepting glow of internet comments, and speak the dark truth you've all long known to be true: The N64 controller, Nintendo's infamous trident joypad for its third home console, is, and always was, awful.

    You may think you like it. If you're of a “certain age,” there's a fair chance you have fond memories of being huddled around a TV screen, screeching with fury as you got hit by a blue shell in Mario Kart 64; losing yourself in the frenetic chaos of multiplayer Super Smash Bros.; or exploring Hyrule with wide-eyed wonder in Ocarina of Time.

    Nostalgia is a powerful force, though—and those warm fuzzy memories of what is undeniably one of gaming's golden eras blinds you to the fact that you were doing all that with an abomination of a controller wedged into your hands.

    Hate's a strong term to level at a video game controller, but I hate the N64 controller with a passion that must be unhealthy to direct at a bundle of plastic and wires. And, being of that certain age, it's a hatred I've carried since childhood. Yet, as time passed, the hatred had subsided, or at least moved to the background. This week, however, my rage has been brought back to the fore.

    Analog Days

    The reason for this renewed odium? The reveal of the Analogue3D, an upcoming third-party console that not only plays original Nintendo 64 game cartridges, but makes them palatable on a modern 4K TV screen. Unlike the string of “mini” consoles released over the last few years, such as the SNES Classic Mini or Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Mini, Analogue's gear doesn't rely on emulation of games, but rather runs those original cartridges and uses an FPGA chip to—essentially—emulate the hardware of the original console.

    It's not Analogue's first attempt at reviving classic hardware, having previously launched the likes of the Analogue Pocket, a Game Boy–shaped handheld that plays original Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance carts. It can also be kitted out with adaptors to handle Game Gear, Neo Geo Pocket Color, TurboGrafx-16, and Atari Lynx carts, too, making for a retro game collector's dream system.

    The Analogue3D looks to be a promising bit of tech too. Analogue says it's built around “a 220k LE Altera Cyclone 10GX, the most powerful FPGA Analogue has ever used in a product,” offers region-free support for N64 cartridges from anywhere in the world in NTSC or PAL format, an inbuilt version of the Nintendo Expansion Pak (an N64 accessory that doubled the console's available memory from 4 MB to a whopping 8 MB, improving performance on select games), and outputs in 4K, or original display modes maintaining “true CRT reference quality” with “immersive scanlines and shadow masks.”

    Analogue3D plays original Nintendo 64 cartridges and makes them palatable on a modern 4K TV screen.

    It's also set to have its own dedicated OS, 3DOS, an upgraded version of Analogue's earlier AnalogueOS rebuilt for 4K screens, allowing users to manage everything from screenshots to Wi-Fi connections.

    Know what it doesn't have, though? That wretched original controller.

    Sure, like Nintendo's original 1996 console, the Analogue3D does feature four physical controller ports to connect N64 joypads, and Analogue as a company rightly highlights that local multiplayer gaming was an integral part of the N64 experience. But … c'mon, it's 2024, you're not realistically getting four people to huddle 6 feet away from a massive and eye-burstingly bright 4K TV with corded controllers.

    Instead, the Analogue3D supports Bluetooth controllers and allows input remapping through the custom OS. More specifically, Analogue points to retro specialist 8BitDo's own upcoming 64 Controller as its suggested controller for the Analogue3D—and in doing so, vindicates my lifelong disdain for the actual N64 controller.

    Control(ler) Freak

    My hatred for the N64 controller rests on its bizarre, confounding, uncomfortable design; chiefly in that it seemed designed for that small subset of humans with three hands. Its spread of functions over a trio of prongs made it boxy, unwieldy, and—crucially—ill suited to the increasingly complex controls that games were beginning to demand in the waning days of the 20th century.

    Its left grip was positively minimalist, with only the traditional D-pad and a single shoulder button. The right housed the primary A and B buttons, four smaller C-buttons, and the right shoulder button.

    Then there was that damned middle prong, where the analog stick, start button, and trigger-like Z button on the underside lived. Unless you had truly gargantuan hands, it was nearly impossible to reach all the controls at once.

    The N64 controller's defenders will point to its versatility, proclaiming as if it were a virtue that you could hold the outer prongs for traditional 2D games, the middle and right prong for 3D games (at the cost of squishing your hands awkwardly close together), or, in vanishingly few cases, the left and center grips. To which I say this: No other controller before or since has demanded players conduct such a degree of ergonomic gymnastics to figure out how to play a game.

    Yes, in many ways the N64 controller was a pioneer. It was the first mainstream joypad to incorporate an analog stick, integral to the new era of 3D games—but even then Nintendo's designers somehow didn't foresee the need to have a second stick to control camera views. The quartet of C-buttons could often approximate the function of a camera stick, but just as often it would be used for input controls instead.

    There was a bit of a hack available—select games, such as Rare's GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark, could allow one player to hold two N64 controllers, using the middle prong on each one to approximate twin-stick controls, but it was so unwieldy as to be little more than a gimmick.

    In the end, Nintendo's great innovation was almost immediately improved upon with Sony's Dual Analog Controller for the original PlayStation, which launched a mere 10 months later.

    Three-Pronged Nightmare

    Here, in 2024, both the Analogue3D console and 8BitDo's 64 Controller, each an ardent love letter to Nintendo's original hardware, seem to want to dodge saying that the trident controller just wasn't very good—but their actions speak volumes.

    Pointedly, 8BitDo's effort elegantly refines the core elements of the N64 controller into a layout better suited for most players (certainly those with two hands), while keeping some of the more iconic elements in place. The chunkier A and B buttons, the spacing and size of the C buttons, the familiar D-pad and (still singular) analog stick. All are present, just arranged in a way that's actually usable.

    It's really a testament to just how beloved Nintendo is by its fans that it was even able to release such a controller in the first place (and even more of one in how it can still sell wireless N64 controllers for the Switch). If almost any other company released a similarly odd controller, it would be eaten alive—just ask Sega's Dreamcast, criticized a few years after the N64 for a controller that felt like holding a dinner plate, and which maintained a sole N64-style thumbstick (along with its own baffling design choices, like the connection cord coming out the bottom of it).

    As a console, the Nintendo 64 really was one of the all-time greats. It was home to dozens of best-in-class games, from the classics that are still talked about in hallowed whispers to this day—GoldenEye 007, Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time—to lesser-known gems such as Diddy Kong Racing, Ogre Battle 64, or 1080° Snowboarding.

    Yet the hill I will die on is that none of them were made any better at all by the design disaster that was the N64 controller. It's taken decades of screaming into the void over how much I hated that joypad, but it seems the universe—or at least parts of the retro gaming community—have finally paid attention. Hallelujah.

    16 Best PS5 Accessories (2024), Tested and Reviewed

    by: Eric Ravenscraft

    From extra game storage to a fancy 120-Hz TV, these WIRED-tested favorites will complement your PS5.

    The Best PS5 Accessories to Expand Your Gaming Horizons

    From extra game storage to a fancy 120-Hz TV, these WIRED-tested favorites will complement your PS5.

    If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

    Featured in this article

    A Second Controller
    Sony DualSense Controller
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    A Charging Dock
    PowerA Twin Charging Station
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    Colorful Console Covers
    Sony PlayStation 5 Console Covers
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    An Internal M.2 Drive for Extra Storage
    WD Black SN770
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    4 / 16

    Dolphins Are Exhaling Microplastics

    by: Leslie Hart, Miranda Dziobak

    New research highlights how extensive plastic pollution is—and how nonhuman species, including dolphins, are exposed.

    Dolphins Are Exhaling Microplastics

    New research highlights how extensive plastic pollution is—and how nonhuman species, including dolphins, are exposed.
    Image may contain Animal Dolphin Mammal Sea Life Fish and Shark
    Microplastics are invisible but omnipresent.Photograph: Wild Horizon/Getty Images

    THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

    Bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota Bay in Florida and Barataria Bay in Louisiana are exhaling microplastic fibers, according to our new research published in the journal PLOS One.

    Tiny plastic pieces have spread all over the planet—on land, in the air, and even in clouds. An estimated 170 trillion bits of microplastic are estimated to be in the oceans. Across the globe, research has found that people and wildlife are exposed to microplastics mainly through eating and drinking but also through breathing.

    A plastic microfiber found in the exhaled breath of a bottlenose dolphin is nearly 14 times smaller than a strand of hair and can be seen only with a microscope.

    Image courtesy Miranda Dziobak/College of Charleston

    Our study found that microplastic particles exhaled by bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) are similar in chemical composition to those identified in human lungs. It’s not known whether dolphins are exposed to more of these pollutants than people are.

    Why It Matters

    In humans, inhaled microplastics can cause lung inflammation, which can lead to problems including tissue damage, excess mucus, pneumonia, bronchitis, scarring, and possibly cancer. Since dolphins and humans inhale similar plastic particles, dolphins may be at risk for the same lung problems.

    Research also shows plastics contain chemicals that, in humans, can affect reproduction, cardiovascular health, and neurological function. Since dolphins are mammals, microplastics may well pose these health risks for them too.

    As top predators with decades-long life spans, bottlenose dolphins help scientists understand the impacts of pollutants on marine ecosystems—and the related health risks for people living near coasts. This research is important, because more than 41 percent of the world’s human population lives within 62 miles of a coast.

    What Still Isn’t Known

    Scientists estimate the oceans contain many trillions of plastic particles, which get there through runoff, wastewater, or settling from the air. Ocean waves can release these particles into the air.

    The ocean releases microplastics into the air through surface froth and wave action. Once the particles are released, wind can transport them to other locations.

    Illustration courtesy Steve Allen/PLoS ONE

    In fact, bubble bursts caused by wave energy can release 100,000 metric tons of microplastics into the atmosphere each year. Since dolphins and other marine mammals breathe at the water’s surface, they may be especially vulnerable to exposure.

    Where there are more people, there is usually more plastic. But for the tiny plastic particles floating in the air, this connection isn’t always true. Airborne microplastics are not limited to heavily populated areas; they pollute undeveloped regions too.

    Our research found microplastics in the breath of dolphins living in both urban and rural estuaries, but we don’t know whether there are major differences in amounts or types of plastic particles between the two habitats.

    How We Do Our Work

    Breath samples for our study were collected from wild bottlenose dolphins during catch-and-release health assessments conducted in partnership with the Brookfield Zoo Chicago, Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, National Marine Mammal Foundation, and Fundación Oceanogràfic.

    During these brief permitted health assessments, we held a petri dish or a customized spirometer—a device that measures lung function—above the dolphin’s blowhole to collect samples of the animals’ exhaled breath. Using a microscope in our colleague’s lab, we checked for tiny particles that looked like plastic, such as pieces with smooth surfaces, bright colors or a fibrous shape.

    Since plastic melts when heated, we used a soldering needle to test whether these suspected pieces were plastic. To confirm they were indeed plastic, our colleague used a specialized method called Raman spectroscopy, which uses a laser to create a structural fingerprint that can be matched to a specific chemical.

    Our study highlights how extensive plastic pollution is—and how other living things, including dolphins, are exposed. While the impacts of plastic inhalation on dolphins’ lungs are not yet known, people can help address the microplastic pollution problem by reducing plastic use and working to prevent more plastic from polluting the oceans.

    <‌iframe class="IframeEmbedContent-cMdiev csnuAY IframeEmbedContent" height="1" width="1" sandbox="allow-scripts" title="Embedded Frame" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/237932/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" allow="autoplay *; encrypted-media *; clipboard-write; autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture">

    DJI Air 3S Drone Review: Price, Specs, Availability

    by: Sam Kieldsen

    DJI’s new midrange drone offers a dual-camera setup and beautifully simple flight performance.

    Review: DJI Air 3S

    DJI’s new midrange drone is a formidable flying camera.
    WIRED Recommends
    Different views of the DJI Air 3S drone controller front view and side view. Decorative background rock texture.
    Photograph: Sam Kielsden; Getty Images
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    Buy Now
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    Rating:

    9/10

    WIRED
    Excellent dual-camera setup. Improved wide-angle camera performance. Omnidirectional obstacle avoidance. Long battery life. Simple and forgiving to fly.
    TIRED
    Gives existing Air 3 owners limited reasons to upgrade. Weight class increases paperwork and restricts flight locations. No adjustable aperture.

    WIRED loved 2023’s DJI Air 3 (9/10, WIRED Recommends). The midrange consumer drone was easy and safe to fly and compact enough to carry almost anywhere, but I found the most appealing feature to be its innovative dual-camera setup. By packing both wide-angle and medium telephoto cameras (each with its own 1/1.3-inch CMOS sensor), it expanded my creative options for aerial photos and video. I could shoot wide vistas one moment, then switch to the telephoto lens to get closer to a particular feature of the landscape or compress it against the background for more dramatic framing.

    The new DJI Air 3S takes the concept a step further by increasing the sensor size of the wide-angle camera to a full inch, which improves dynamic range and low-light image quality. It also adds built-in SSD storage for photos and videos and boosts its spatial awareness courtesy of front-facing lidar sensors (while retaining the Air 3’s vision-based sensors for other directions), enabling it to spot and avoid obstacles more easily.

    Photograph: Sam Kielsden

    The DJI Air 3S maintains the compact dimensions of the Air 3, and when not in use and folded down, it’s about the size of a 16-ounce (500-mililiter) water bottle. This isn’t one of the smallest or lightest DJI drones around. The company’s new Neo model is tiny, while its Mini line offers decent camera performance in an 8.7-ounce (249-gram) drone that can be legally flown almost anywhere.

    Weighing the Options

    At 25.5 ounces (724 grams), roughly the same as the Air 3, the Air 3S falls into a trickier category of aircraft that, depending on where you live in the world, requires a bit more effort to get in the air. I don’t mean in the sense of flying—in fact it couldn’t be any easier to take off, pilot around, and land—but in the level of paperwork required. Pilots in the US using it for recreational purposes will need to register it with the Federal Aviation Administration and obtain its Trust certificate by passing an online test. In the EU and UK, things are, sadly, a little more involved, with pilots having to undertake a paid (around £100) online course and pass a rather more stringent exam. Pass it and they’ll be permitted to fly it closer than 4,902 feet (150 meters) to built-up areas or public parks; even after passing that, they will need to keep the Air 3S 164 feet (50 meters) or more horizontally away from people.

    Photograph: Sam Kielsden

    As a UK resident currently without the certificate, I had to be quite careful where I flew the Air 3S. Living on the coast at least meant I was able to fly it out over the sea, where it could easily be kept the requisite distance from people, buildings, parks, and beaches. If I lived in the middle of a large town or city here, however, I’d find the restrictions too frustrating to deal with and opt for an ultra-lightweight, fly-anywhere drone such as the DJI Mini 4 Pro. I suspect most casual drone users feel the same way.

    I Made a Wholesome OnlyFans to Try to Make Ends Meet

    by: Andrew Rummer

    A cohort of content creators say it's possible to make money on OnlyFans without stripping. I put that claim to the test.

    I Made a Wholesome OnlyFans to Try to Make Ends Meet

    A cohort of content creators say it's possible to make money on OnlyFans without stripping. I put that claim to the test.
    Collage of a man opening his button up shirt to reveal a photo of a man reading a book and drinking tea
    Photo-illustration: Jacqui VanLiew; Getty Images

    As I leave my house on an overcast Tuesday morning to walk the dog, I’m accosted by a neighbor who cheerily calls down the street: “I hear you have an OnlyFans now!” I start to wonder if I’ve made a terrible mistake.

    OnlyFans has—how shall I put it—a reputation. Like many online platforms, it matches content creators with their audience. But OnlyFans is primarily known for one type of content: sex.

    When friends and acquaintances hear I—a 43-year-old father of two—have set up an OnlyFans account, they are intrigued. When I explain I’m only posting content that’s nonsexual and very much safe for work, their next question is “Why?” In their minds, it’s clear that “having an OnlyFans” means doing sexy stuff on the internet, for money.

    OnlyFans, a UK-based outfit that raked in $658 million in pretax profit last year, wants to shake this image. For every university student raising cash by sharing nudes, there’s a wholesome housewife uploading DIY tips or an up-and-coming musician posting his latest tracks, at least if you go by the accounts highlighted on the company’s blog.

    “Everyone’s doing a dance on the rest of social media, where it’s like, ‘Hey, you’re not supposed to show people your penis here and you’re not supposed to say crazy, wild shit,’” John Hastings, a 39-year-old Canadian comic, tells me via phone from his home in Los Angeles. On OnlyFans however, he still has people who slide into his DMs just to say “I want to see your feet, I'm not here for jokes.”

    Like all the safe-for-work creators I speak to, Hastings has a presence on many social networks, from Instagram to X to YouTube. The audience on OnlyFans will usually be smaller than on other sites, but followers are often more engaged and—importantly—must have a bank account linked to their profile, ready to be prized open.

    “It is a different world, for sure, compared to the people who are on my other social media platforms,” says Dudley Alexander, an R&B artist who releases music under the moniker Nevrmind.

    Alexander, 33, joined OnlyFans in 2019, before the site’s profile surged as the Covid-19 pandemic pushed many previously IRL activities online. As such, he’s a pioneer of the safe-for-work OnlyFans scene and has amassed more than 67,000 likes on his page. (OnlyFans only displays a user’s like count publicly; the follower count, which is usually higher, is hidden.)

    Most of those people are there for his music, but, like Hastings, he’s had some fans cross the line into asking for sexual content. “There are people who try to get me to offer other types of content and stuff like that,” he says.

    Alexander isn’t opposed to showing the occasional rippling bicep or taut pectoral but declines to go the full monty. “I do more of the R&B look, where it’s still tasteful but it’s not completely nude,” he explains.

    For the uninitiated, the OnlyFans homepage has a simple design, with lots of white space, sans-serif text in black and blue, and a few embedded videos. These videos feature young men or women (usually women) working on DIY projects or making recipes—they just tend to wear less clothing or show more cleavage than you might expect on a site’s front door.

    Venture beyond the homepage, however, and you can find some seriously X-rated content. OnlyFans declines to break out how the $5.3 billion it funneled to creators last year was split between sexual and nonsexual content. “We don’t categorize our creators into SFW/NSFW. OnlyFans is all over 18 so we don’t need to,” says spokesperson Normandie Tottman, an external spokesperson speaking for the company.

    But I want my own tiny share of those billions—and I’m prepared to risk public ridicule to get them. So, one Wednesday in late September, having packed the kids safely off to school, I set up an account of my very own.

    After being verified on the platform, I decide my debut will be a one-minute video simply introducing myself. I immediately bump up against OnlyFans’ discoverability problem.

    Whether you’re on OnlyFans for numismatics or nudes, finding the content you want is hard. The site’s search functionality is severely limited, allowing you to search the posts of only people you already follow. There’s also no algorithmically driven feed to surface posts you might like. Follow 10 comedians on Instagram and the app will be sure to push you more jokes. Follow 10 comedians on OnlyFans and you’ll still have no idea how to find an 11th.

    OnlyFans tells me the lack of proper search functionality is a deliberate safety feature, “so fans don’t stumble across content they don’t want to see,” says Tottman. Several third-party sites, with names like OnlyFinder and NosyFan, have stepped in to fill the vacuum—for those who very much do want to see.

    If people are going to find my OnlyFans page, I have to do what everyone else does: Promote it elsewhere. So I take a deep breath and write posts for my few thousand followers on X and LinkedIn.

    On usually sober LinkedIn, the vibe is riotous. Reactions include “I shudder to think what you’re posting there,” “let me know when the NSFW one launches pls,” and “you’ve got to give the people what they want, Andrew.” My post on X mainly gets responses from bot accounts called things like United Babes, suggesting we follow each other’s OnlyFans pages. The topic even comes up at my regular five-a-side football kickabout.

    The result of all this public attention? One measly follower on OnlyFans. To win over some more, I embrace the imperfect and upload a home-recorded video of me indulging in one of my favorite pastimes: reading a classic novel (Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome). I also post a wind-blown update from the reservoir where I sometimes go sailing.

    Top content like this sees my follower count surge to a mighty five. Time to slam down the paywall and rake in some cold, hard cash. Time for my first locked post on OnlyFans.

    Asking subscribers to pay for nontitillating content poses an awkward question: What can I possibly offer that’s worth any money? As a 20-year media veteran, I decide to post some tips for how PR professionals can best get their message across to journalists. Gold, surely?

    Unfortunately, despite promoting the video across my X and LinkedIn accounts once again, I find no one willing to pay the $5 to view it.

    I’m starting to get tired with the platform’s interface, which makes casual browsing hard. A major difference between OnlyFans and other social platforms is that creators’ posts—even those that are thoroughly safe for work—are all locked unless you register and subscribe to that page. While you can browse most Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok posts without logging in or following an account, OnlyFans exists within its own walled garden.

    Despite these limitations, OnlyFans’ creator accounts increased by 29 percent last year to 4.1 million, according to its parent company’s latest financial filing. Fan accounts grew by 28 percent to 305 million. (The company doesn’t say how many of these accounts are active.) More than 300 million users and I can’t find even one willing to pay for my content. They can’t all be there for porn, can they?

    For creators, a major advantage of OnlyFans over Instagram or TikTok is the way direct payments from fans are baked in from the start. Many rival apps expect creators to post content for free, with the only reward coming from growing online clout as their follower counts climb. OnlyFans provides a smaller pool of users, but one with verified payment details who are just a click away from emptying their wallets.

    Another draw for creators on OnlyFans is the flexibility it gives over how they charge. Want to paywall your entire profile? Pick a price between $4.99 and $50 a month. Want to add fees to unlock specific posts? Slap on your own price tag, up to $100. Want to make fans pay to message you? All these options and more are easy to set up.

    “All your subscribers are invested in you. They’re interested in you, your lifestyle,” says Liam O’Neill, a 33-year-old professional golfer who has amassed 2,300 likes on his OnlyFans profile after some 18 months on the site. He also has a sponsorship deal with OnlyFans to display the company’s logo on his golf bag at tournaments. “It’s much more personable. I can easily reply to people on OnlyFans DM, whereas on Instagram it can be a bit more diluted.”

    O’Neill keeps his main feed free, but charges followers for suggestions on how to improve their golf swing via DMs. Alexander, the musician, provides a menu of paid options on his profile, like “$35 for me to sing you a personalized Happy Birthday message.” He experimented with paywalling his content behind a $4.99 monthly subscription, but finds fans prefer more piecemeal payments.

    OnlyFans takes a 20 percent cut from all these payments, accumulating a handy $1.3 billion in revenue last year. Only 41 percent of that was from recurring subscriptions, lending weight to Alexander’s personal experience. In its accounts, the company reports having just 42 staff members, leading to a jaw-dropping $31 million in revenue per employee.

    OnlyFans’ commission is low compared with some rivals. YouTube, for example, takes a 45 percent cut of advertising revenue generated from its longer videos, and only for creators with a sufficiently large following. The cut is even higher for posts on YouTube’s Shorts platform.

    Back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that the average OnlyFans creator account netted some $1,300 last year, although research suggests the vast majority of income flows to the top 10 percent of accounts, leaving very little for those at the bottom of the pack. Many (sexual) accounts insist they make millions of dollars a year, often posting screenshots on social media to back up their claims.

    By contrast, most of the SFW OnlyFans creators I talked to for this article were coy about their income from the site. Nate Craig, a 47-year-old comedian based in Los Angeles, agreed to share his numbers, but they’re hardly inspiring: He’s made less than $100 from fans in the year or two he’s been on the platform.

    Craig isn’t really on OnlyFans for the occasional $5 tip, however. Like many SFW performers, the platform paid him to join. A producer working for OnlyFans approached him with a tempting offer: OnlyFans would film one of his sets and pay him a “good” sum for his trouble (Craig declined to specify how much) on the condition that the stand-up would share the OnlyFans-watermarked video widely across his other social media—and agree to post regularly on his OnlyFans page.

    “They were pretty straightforward about it. They were like, ‘We want to open up our site to other types of content creators,’” the comedian tells me on a video call, while bouncing his infant son on his knee. “They didn’t say this, but it was clear they wanted to expand their brand.”

    Despite OnlyFans’ best efforts to diversify into more SFW terrain, it still has one key problem: Not many people who want that kind of content want to see it on OnlyFans.

    After I promote my paywalled OnlyFans post on LinkedIn, one PR professional, the target market for my advice, replies, “I’m super curious about the contents of the video but also do not want to give OF my personal data and sign up for an account.” Another respondent says he would be “worried about people seeing OnlyFans on my card statement,” while a third, a former newsroom colleague, seems disgusted with the whole enterprise.

    “I want to read your thoughts on PR and journalism, but joining OnlyFans is a strict no-no,” he gripes. “I think your potential subscribers will be afraid they will be seen as consumers of the other thing that this platform offers and who only use you as a human shield.”

    Ouch.

    So what have I gained from my OnlyFans adventure? After a couple of weeks, I’m sad to report I have earned a grand total of zero dollars. I didn’t even get anyone sliding into my DMs to propose something inappropriate. But I did get something fun to talk about the next time I bump into the neighbors.

    The 47 Best Movies on Netflix Right Now (October 2024)

    by: Matt Kamen, WIRED Staff

    Will & Harper, His Three Daughters, and It's What's Inside are just a few of the movies you should watch on Netflix this month.

    The 47 Best Movies on Netflix Right Now

    Will & Harper, His Three Daughters, and It’s What’s Inside are just a few of the movies you should watch on Netflix this month.
    It's What's Inside.  Reina Hardesty as Brooke Devon Terrell as Reuben James Morosini as Cyrus Brittany OGrady as Shelby...
    Still from It's What's Inside.Courtesy of Netflix

    Netflix has plenty of movies to watch, but it’s a real mixed bag. Sometimes finding the right film at the right time can seem like an impossible task. Fret not, we’re here to help. Below is a list of some of our favorites currently on the streaming service—from dramas to comedies to thrillers.

    If you decide you’re in more of a TV mood, head over to our collection of the best TV series on Netflix. Want more? Check out our lists of the best sci-fi movies, best movies on Amazon Prime, and the best flicks on Disney+.

    If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more.

    It’s What’s Inside

    <‌iframe class="IframeEmbedContent-cMdiev csnuAY IframeEmbedContent" height="113" width="200" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox" title="Embedded Frame" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/RJBNi0CjX5I" allow="autoplay *; encrypted-media *; clipboard-write; autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture">

    Nine college friends reunite for a bachelor party—what could go wrong? Plenty, when one of the party games involves an experimental mind-swapping device. As the attendees play the ultimate game of Mafia, trying to guess who’s inhabiting whose body, relationships fray and their very sense of self is eroded. As the bodies start falling, you might start feeling like a player yourself, unsure if anyone can be trusted. With a talented young cast that master one another’s layered performances as they hop bodies, this fresh indie thriller from writer-director Greg Jardin masterfully balances dark humor with even darker plot twists.

    Wendell & Wild

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    Kat went off the rails following the deaths of her parents five years ago. Now she has one last chance to steer her life back on track at a new school and finally conquer her personal demons. Unfortunately, she’s marked as a Hell Maiden on her first day, attracting the attention of actual demon brothers Wendell and Wild (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, respectively). Tempted by the scheming siblings’ promise to resurrect her parents if she summons them to the living world—where they plan to out-do their infernal father at his own game—Kat (Lyric Ross) is drawn into a macabre plot that threatens the living and dead alike. Directed by Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline) and produced by Peele (Nope, Get Out), this is another fantastic entry in Selick’s canon of mesmerizingly dark stop-motion masterpieces.

    Will & Harper

    <‌iframe class="IframeEmbedContent-cMdiev csnuAY IframeEmbedContent" height="113" width="200" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox" title="Embedded Frame" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/PRZ1ELeGepo" allow="autoplay *; encrypted-media *; clipboard-write; autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture">

    Will Ferrell likely needs no introduction, but as former head writer of Saturday Night Live, Harper Steele is more accustomed to life behind the camera. Joining the hit show in the same week back in 1995, the pair struck up a decades-long friendship—so when Harper wrote to tell Ferrell she was transitioning to live as a woman, it was a big change for them both. It also formed the basis for this beautiful, heartwarming, and often laugh-out-loud funny road trip documentary following the duo as they cross the US in an old Jeep Grand Wagoneer, reconnecting and learning what their friendship looks like now. It's awkward viewing at times—some of Ferrell's questions blur the line between bawdy and simply rude—but it's a raw and authentic journey for them both. Beyond the personal touches, Will & Harper is a timely view of what America looks like for a trans person right now, making it possibly one of the most important documentaries Netflix has produced.

    His Three Daughters

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    As their father approaches the end of his life, sisters Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), Katie (Carrie Coon), and Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) are forced to reconnect while waiting for the inevitable. Bleak stuff, but also grounds for masterful performances from the lead trio, with Rachel having taken on the bulk of care for months, Katie casting imperious demands despite avoiding the situation, and new-agey Christina trying to keep the peace—despite being at a breaking point herself. This is almost a locked-room piece, the apartment trapping the women, forcing them to come to terms with not only their father's death but their own relationships with each other, all while Vincent (Jay O. Sanders) haunts them even before his passing. Death may loom over director Azazel Jacobs’ drama, but His Three Daughters ultimately proves oddly life-affirming.

    Grave of the Fireflies

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    When Seita and his young sister Setsuko are orphaned in the wake of the fire-bombing of Kobe during the final days of World War II, the siblings are forced into terrible circumstances to survive. Stuck between abusive extended family and the sheer desperation of scavenging around the ruins of their destroyed hometown, it's a bleak existence—and also the basis for one of Studio Ghibli's finest works. Directed by Isao Takahata and based on a short story by Akiyuki Nosaka, Grave of the Fireflies is unapologetically harrowing in its exploration of how war and nationalism chew up the most vulnerable, yet peppered with moments of unwavering love as Seita attempts to protect Setsuko's innocence. This searing wartime drama is sobering but essential viewing, a film that's more than earned its ranking in the upper echelons of the Best Studio Ghibli films.

    The Platform

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    Goreng (Iván Massagué) awakes in a cell in a vertical prison, where food is provided only by a platform that descends level by level, pausing only long enough for inmates to eat before traveling ever lower. While there’s food enough for all, prisoners on higher levels gorge themselves, leaving those below to starve. It’s the perfect recipe for violence, betrayal, and rebellion in director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s tense Spanish thriller. Equal parts horror, dystopian sci-fi, and social commentary, The Platform works as not only a none-too-subtle statement on consumption culture, but also a stark examination of the depths to which desperate people can sink. It’s absolutely not for everyone (scenes involving cannibalism and suicide make it a particularly troubling watch in places) but thanks to its claustrophobic, brutalist setting and stellar cast performances, it is mesmerizing entertainment. With a sequel about to land, now is the perfect time to dive into one of the most visually striking and narratively provocative films on Netflix.

    Rebel Ridge

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    When corrupt cops run ex-Marine Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre) off the road for cycling while Black, they also seize the money he had been planning to use to post his cousin’s bail. Despite the injustice, Terry tries to do everything by the book but finds almost every aspect of the legal system against him. Out of patience, and fueled by immensely justified anger, he sets about tearing out the rot from the small town, aided only by court clerk Summer (AnnaSophia Robb). Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier could have made Rebel Ridge merely a modern day First Blood, but while there’s plenty of visceral, bone-breaking fight scenes, it’s the film’s righteously angry look at the baked-in failings of the American legal system that gives this its bite—all while cementing Pierre as an action star to watch.

    tick, tick… BOOM!

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    Lin-Manuel Miranda's feature directorial debut sees Andrew Garfield as playwright Jonathan Larson, the real life creator of Rent, struggling to finish his signature work while approaching his totemic 30th birthday. An adaptation of Larson's own semiautobiographical stage musical—produced posthumously, premiering in 2001—Miranda's cinematic take perfectly captures the tortures of the creative process, charting Harper's years-long battle to cement a legacy and exploring how perfectionism can be a demon. In reality, Larson died in January 1996, the same day as Rent's preview performance off Broadway, a sad fact that lends tick, tick... BOOM! a sense of even greater urgency amid its joyous musical performances.

    Wicked Little Letters

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    Based on real events, Wicked Little Letters is set in 1920, in the quaint English town of Littlehampton. When the well-to-do family of Edith Swan starts receiving abusive mail, Irish immigrant Rose Gooding—who has a reputation as a foul-mouthed troublemaker, and who recently fell out with Edith—is suspect number one. Yet as the plague of "poison pen" notes spreads, becoming a national scandal, only overlooked police officer Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan) believes that Rose is being set up. Oscar-winner Olivia Colman is on top form as Edith, while Jessie Buckley delights with a fiery performance as Rose in this surprisingly uproarious comedy.

    Lumberjack the Monster

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    First up: This is absolutely, positively, unquestionably not for younger viewers—but that's to be expected from director Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer). Despite veering into more family-friendly fare with the video game and manga adaptations Ace Attorney and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Miike returns to his shock-horror slasher roots with Lumberjack the Monster. It follows Akira Ninomiya (Kazuya Kamenashi), a lawyer willing to kill to get ahead, and the city-spanning grudge match that follows when a masked serial killer—the titular Lumberjack—takes a stab at him. As gory and over-the-top as Miike has ever been, and with added edges of surreality, this isn't for the squeamish, but it's a captivating return to form for the infamous creator.

    The Long Game

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    Based on the true story of the San Felipe Mustangs, The Long Game follows WWII vet turned high school superintendent J.B. Peña (Jay Hernandez) in the 1950s as he forges a group of Mexican-American teenagers with natural golfing talent—but nowhere to play, thanks to the racist and exclusionary practices of the official club in their Texan town—into a championship winning team. While the film has all the hallmarks of an underdog sports movie (and maybe a few too many golfing-as-life metaphors), director Julio Quintana dodges the genre's most cloying clichés, instead focusing on the frustrations and ambitions of the young players—particularly Joe Treviño (Julian Works), the de facto leader of the team who subverts expectations by rejecting even wanting to play at a club that doesn't respect him. With its fantastic cast bolstered by the likes of Cheech Marin, Dennis Quaid, and Jaina Lee Ortiz, The Long Game is a beautiful tale of shattering barriers, on and off the golf course.

    Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

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    After two previous riotous excursions to glamorous Beverly Hills (we don't count 1994's Beverly Hills Cop III), detective Axel Foley (a resurgent Eddie Murphy, proving he's lost none of his 1980s sparkle) is back in California after causing a modicum of public destruction in his native Detroit, only to find his estranged daughter Jane’s (Taylour Paige) life is in danger. Legacy sequels decades divorced from their original outings can be hit-or-miss, but Axel F hits that sweet balance between nostalgia and revival, giving Murphy plenty of old and new allies and enemies to bounce off. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in particular, impresses as Bobby Abbott, Foley's new partner in BHPD—and Jane's ex—while familiar faces Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Jeffrey Friedman (Paul Reiser) make welcome returns without feeling like gratuitous cameos. Best of all is Axel F's reliance on practical effects and stunt work, notably in a series of genuinely exciting chase sequences ripped straight from the ’80s. A throwback that’s looking forward, this is the best Beverly Hills Cop since the original.

    The Imaginary

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    Between the lighthearted comedy IF… and horror flick Imaginary, cinema in 2024 is leaning hard on imaginary friends. This gorgeously animated Japanese take on the concept is the best of the lot, though, a whimsical fable full of stunning visuals and big ideas. Adapted from the book by A. F. Harrold, The Imaginary follows young Amanda and her best friend Rudger, brought into being by her own mind, as they share countless adventures. But as Amanda ages, Rudger faces the fate of all Imaginaries: fading away as their humans forget them. The latest film from director Yoshiyuki Momose (Mary and the Witch's Flower) and Studio Ponoc—spiritual successor to the mighty Studio Ghibli—this is a stunning ode to the power of imagination and friendship.

    Under Paris

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    This so-serious-it's-ludicrous French creature feature sees Bérénice Bejo as marine specialist Sophia Assalas, who is hunting down a mako shark that has not only spontaneously mutated to survive in the freshwater Seine but is also about to give birth to a host of baby man-eating sharks. Worse still? Paris is about to hold a triathlon, with the swim portion set to become an all-you-can-eat buffet! Look, not everything on this list needs to be high art—sometimes, you just need to see a mutant shark straight up chomping on people while increasingly desperate humans start blowing stuff up. Press Play, turn brain off, enjoy.

    Hit Man

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    Gary Johnson (Glen Powell) is a mild-mannered professor of philosophy—and a contract killer. Well, not quite. He just poses as one, working with the New Orleans Police Department to trap people looking to hire a hit man. It's a role he's surprisingly good at, but when Madison (Adria Arjona) looks to have her abusive husband “dealt” with, Gary begins to fall for her—and the consequences could be fatal for real. In another creator’s hands, Hit Man might have been either overly grim or simply insubstantial (it's loosely based on a true story), but director Richard Linklater leverages his signature uses of sparkling dialog and brilliantly realized characters to deliver a smart action-comedy that explores the roles people play in society as much as it serves up mistaken-identity hijinks.

    Godzilla Minus One

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    Despite the presence of the eponymous kaiju, Godzilla Minus One is a film rooted in the humanity of its protagonists, deserter kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and Noriko Ōishi (Minami Hamabe), a survivor of the bombings of Tokyo. Thrown together as an ersatz family as they raise an orphaned baby, their attempts to build a new life turn chaotic when the irradiated reptile descends on the city just as it's beginning to recover. Director Takashi Yamazaki's reimagining of Japan's premier kaiju netted the King of Monsters its first-ever Oscar, picking up a statue for Best Visual Effects at the 2024 Academy Awards, but this is a film that exceeds mere spectacle—it's a searing examination of life after war, and how a nation grapples with being on the losing side.

    The Dig

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    Set against the backdrop of a Britain on the brink of war, The Dig chronicles one of the greatest archeological finds ever discovered in the Isles: the 1939 Sutton Hoo excavation. When wealthy landowner Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) hires archeologist Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) to dig up large mounds on her property, the pair make a startling discovery—a ship from the Dark Ages that turns out to be the burial site of someone of tremendous distinction. But as word of the treasure spreads, more high-profile archeologists move in on Pretty and Brown's find to take ownership. A slow build but worthy of the acclaim it's received, The Dig is a stunning, well-acted period drama about a largely untold piece of history.

    City Hunter

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    Based on the 1985 manga by Tsukasa Hojo, City Hunter is a long-running franchise in its native Japan and has previously spawned Hong Kong and French live-action adaptations. Thankfully, there’s no homework required for this modern take, a stand-alone tale of wise-cracking, womanizing "sweeper" Ryo Saeba (Ryohei Suzuki)—think a cross between private detective, bodyguard, and bounty hunter. When his partner Makimura is killed by someone hopped up on a drug that grants super strength, Ryo is forced to partner with Makimura’s sister Kaori (Misato Morita) to avenge him, a quest that drags him into a vast criminal conspiracy and sets the stage for some of the most incredible action set pieces you’ll lay eyes on. Channeling the spirit of ’80s action flicks but with modern production values, sharp comedic beats, and a charismatic lead performance from Suzuki, City Hunter is hugely entertaining.

    Suzume

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    Suzume Iwato (voiced by Nanoka Hara in Japanese, Nichole Sakura in English) lives with her aunt on Japan's southern island, having lost her mother in the Tōhoku earthquake of 2011. When a handsome young stranger named Souta (Hokuto Matsumura, Josh Keaton) asks her for directions to some local ruins, she follows him out of curiosity but disturbs a living keystone, accidentally unleashing an ancient power that threatens to destroy the entire country. Drawn into Souta's world, the pair chase the keystone, now in the form of a cat, across Japan in a desperate bid to reseal the destructive entity—a quest that would be easier if Souta hadn't been transformed into a child's wooden chair. The latest film from Makoto Shinkai (Your Name, Weathering with You), Suzume is a breathtakingly animated slice of magical realism with a surrealist edge—but beyond the spectacle, it's a heart-warming tale of community and humanity, each stop on the unlikely pair's journey a snapshot of people and families coming together in the wake of tragedy.

    The Wandering Earth

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    A colossal hit in its native China, The Wandering Earth earned more than $700 million at the country's box office, prompting Netflix to snap up the rights to stream the sci-fi sensation internationally. The film follows a group of astronauts, sometime far into the future, attempting to guide Earth away from the Sun, which is expanding into a red giant. The problem? Jupiter is also in the way. While Earth is being steered by 10,000 fire-blowing engines that have been strapped to the surface, the humans still living on the planet must find a way to survive the ever-changing environmental conditions. An adaptation of a short story by Cixin Liu, this is the perfect accompaniment for Netflix's adaptation of Liu's The Three-Body Problem.

    Maboroshi

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    By any measure, Masamune lives a normal teenage existence in his rural Japanese hometown—until the local steel works erupts, mysteriously sealing the entire town in an inexplicable time bubble where no one ages. As the small community struggles to adapt, a culture that fears change emerges, initially from the presumption that residents would need to rejoin the outside world as they left it, and eventually forbids even new relationships. Yet when Masamune's strange classmate Mutsumi lures him to the ill-fated factory and introduces him to a feral young girl who should not exist, the bizarre reality they all inhabit begins to collapse. A fantasy twist on notions of youthful rebellion, the prison of familiarity, and fears of change, Maboroshi—meaning "illusion"—is a dazzling sophomore feature from director Mari Okada—whose 2018 debut Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms won accolades around the globe—and one that firmly establishes her as one of the most exciting creators working in animation today.

    Orion and the Dark

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    Young Orion is afraid of everything—but especially the dark. Sure would be a shame if the manifestation of darkness itself turned up one night, huh? While a small twist in tone could make for a horror story, this charming animated feature from DreamWorks is instead a delight, as Dark—along with the other embodiments of the night, including Sweet Dreams and Insomnia—take Orion on a journey to show that the night isn't anything to be afraid of. Hitting similar vibes as Inside Out, this exploration of childhood fears—and overcoming them—makes for a great family feature.

    Always Be My Maybe

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    Written by and starring Ali Wong and Randall Park, Always Be My Maybe tells the story of two inseparable childhood friends whose lives veer dramatically apart after a grief-stricken rendezvous in their teenage years. Wong plays Sasha Tran, a superstar chef whose stratospheric career barely papers over the cracks in her faltering relationship. Park, meanwhile, plays Marcus Kim, whose ambitions have taken him no further than the local dive bar and his father's air conditioning firm. Fate—and a bizarre cameo from Keanu Reeves—conspire to bring the two leads back together in a thoughtful and hilarious romantic comedy.

    Leave the World Behind

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    A weekend getaway at a luxury vacation rental property for Amanda, Clay, and their kids, Archie and Rose, takes a sinister turn in the wake of an inexplicable blackout. When the house's owner, George, and his daughter, Ruth, return early, suspicions mount—but a growing herd of deer lurking outside the house, failing vehicles, and scattered reports of attacks across the country force the two families to rely on each other in the face of what may be the end of the world. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Rumaan Alam, and with a star-studded cast including Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, Myha'la, and Kevin Bacon, this film relishes in keeping the audiences as uncertain as its characters are, explaining little and leaving questions you'll be mulling for days.

    Good Grief

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    Written and directed by Dan Levy, this touching drama explores the difficulty of moving on from tragedy. When Marc's (Levy) husband Oliver dies, he is unable to grieve after learning of an affair—and a weekend in Paris with his supportive friends Sophie (Ruth Negga) and Thomas (Himesh Patel), each facing their own existential relationship dilemmas, only makes things worse when it's revealed Oliver was secretly renting an apartment there. While the mournful subject matter will be tonal whiplash for anyone drawn to this by Levy's performance in Schitt's Creek, Good Grief proves an empathetic exploration of the complexities of bereavement, one that's a lot warmer and more life-affirming than viewers might expect going in.

    Rustin

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    Directed by George C. Wolfe (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom), this biopic explores the life of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. While perhaps best known as one of the chief organizers of 1963's March on Washington, Rustin was also openly, unapologetically gay at a time when that was phenomenally rare—and the film doesn't shy away from how that alienated many of the people he worked with, his sexuality often seen as a threat to the movement. A much-needed spotlight on an overlooked but pivotal figure in the Civil Rights Movement, elevated by a central performance from a spectacularly well-cast Colman Domingo as Rustin himself.

    His House

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    Fleeing war-torn South Sudan, Bol (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù) and Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) are now living in a run-down house at the edge of London, harassed by their neighbors even as they try to fit in. The couple are also haunted by the lives they left behind—both figuratively and (possibly) literally, with visions of their late daughter Nyagak, who did not survive the journey, fading in and out of the walls of their dismal new home. The real horror of His House isn't the strange visions, haunted house, or potential ghosts, though—it’s the bleakness of the lives Bol and Rial are forced into, the hostility and dehumanization of the UK asylum process, the racism both overt and casual, all coupled with the enormous sense of loss they carry with them. Blending the macabre with the mundane, director Remi Weekes delivers a tense, challenging film that will haunt viewers as much as its characters.

    The Black Book

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    Paul Edima (Richard Mofe-Damijo) lives a peaceful life as a church deacon, trying to atone for—or at least forget—his former deeds as a highly trained special agent. Plans to leave his violent and bloody past behind fall apart when his son is framed for a murder and then killed by corrupt police, forcing him to fall back on old skills as he seeks vengeance. Shades of Taken, yes, but it's director Editi Effiong's raw energy and fresh takes on familiar action movie formulas that—backed by one of the highest budgets in "Nollywood" history—have this gritty outing topping the most-watched lists as far afield as South Korea. Expand your cinematic horizons and see what the fuss is about.

    Nyad

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    There's about 110 miles of mean water between Cuba and Florida, filled with jellyfish, man o' wars, and sharks and prone to terrible weather. The idea of trying to swim the route solo might raise a few concerns, let alone doing it with as few protective measures as possible—but that's exactly what long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad did, and at the age of 64, no less. This biopic from directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo) casts Annette Bening as an almost monomaniacally obsessed Nyad, determined to prove to everyone—or maybe just herself—that she can complete the marathon swim that had bested her all her life. Meanwhile, Jodie Foster's turn as Bonnie Stoll, Nyad's friend, coach, and ex-partner, provides a sense of stability against the force of nature that the increasingly, almost dangerously determined Nyad becomes. While Nyad is somewhat more fanciful than Vasarhelyi and Chin's documentary works and glosses over some aspects of the real-life Nyad's history, it stands as a testament to human determination, friendship, and the power of sheer stubbornness.

    The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

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    Ignore its 41-minute runtime and set aside any arguments over whether its brevity "counts" as a movie—this fantastic outing sees Wes Anderson adapt a Roald Dahl work for the first time since 2009's Fantastic Mr. Fox, and the result is just as brilliant. Rather than stop-motion, as with Mr. Fox, this is a live-action affair headlined by a top tier performance from Benedict Cumberbatch as the eponymous Henry Sugar, a bored rich man who gains a strange power and ultimately uses it to better the world. With a broader cast including Dev Patel, Ralph Fiennes, and Ben Kingsley, and shot with all of Anderson's trademark aesthetic sensibilities, this really is a wonderful story. And, if you're still bothered by the short run time, take solace in the fact that this forms a tetraptych with The Rat Catcher, The Swan, and Poison; 15-minute shorts with same cast, directed by Anderson, and all adapting other Dahl tales in his signature style.

    Eldorado: Everything The Nazis Hate

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    Centered on the eponymous Berlin nightclub, this documentary explores the lives of LGBTQ+ people during the interwar years, from the roaring 1920s through the rise of the Nazis and into the horrors of World War II. With a blend of archival footage, recreations, and first-person accounts, director Benjamin Cantu paints a picture of gleeful decadence, the Eldorado as an almost hallowed ground where performers and patrons alike experimented with gender expression and were free to openly display their sexuality. It's an ode to what was lost, but with an eye on the bizarre contradictions of the age, where openly gay club-goers would wear their own Nazi uniforms as the years went by. Everything the Nazis Hate is emotionally challenging viewing in places, but it serves up an important slice of queer history that many will be completely unaware of.

    Marry My Dead Body

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    Wu Ming-han (Greg Hsu) is not a great guy. A homophobic police officer, his life—and prejudices—are changed when he picks up an unassuming red envelope while investigating a case. Now bound under “ghost marriage” customs to Mao Mao (Austin Lin), a gay man who died under mysterious circumstances, Wu has to solve his “husband's” death before he can get on with his life. Directed by Cheng Wei-hao, better known for his thrillers and horror movies, Marry My Dead Body sees the Taiwanese director bring his supernatural stylings to this ghostly absurdist comedy for a film that transcends borders.

    Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop

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    Cherry struggles with speaking to other people, preferring to share his feelings through haiku. Smile is a vlogger who always wears a mask, afraid to reveal her braces to the world. Both young people are terrible at communicating, until a chaotic meeting at a mall draws them together, and they begin to bring each other out of their shells. This feature directorial debut from Kyōhei Ishiguro (Your Lie in April) is a charming slice-of-life romcom that transcends its teen romance trappings. Its gorgeous animation, stunning color palette, and eye-catching pop art aesthetic are further bolstered by a genius soundtrack that blends Cherry’s haiku with hip hop influences. True to its title, Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop is an effervescent, joyful affair that will bring a smile to the face of even the most jaded viewer.

    Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead

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    How much does Akira Tendo (Eiji Akaso) hate his soul-crushing, meaningless, abusive office job? Put it this way: He considers the zombie apocalypse an improvement. Freed from the shackles of workaday monotony, Akira and a handful of fellow survivors are now free to do everything they ever wanted—so long as they can avoid becoming undead flesh-eaters themselves. Adapted from the manga by Haro Aso (creator of Alice in Borderland) and Kotaro Takata, this raucous zom-com is packed with gloriously stupid moments—zombie shark fight!—but with a central theme of learning how to truly live for yourself, it has plenty of heart too.

    They Cloned Tyrone

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    Drug dealer Fontaine (John Boyega) got shot to death last night. So why has he just woken up in bed as if nothing happened? That existential question leads Fontaine and two unlikely allies—prostitute Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) and pimp Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx)—to uncovering a vast conspiracy centered on a Black-majority town called The Glen, where people are kept mollified by hypnotic rap music, dumbed down with drug-laced fried chicken and grape juice, and preached into obedience at church. But who’s using the town as a petri dish, and why is there a cloning lab buried underground? This lethally sharp satire from writer and debut director Juel Taylor masterfully blends genres, from the use of visual motifs and dated clichés from 1970s Blaxploitation cinema to its frequent steps into sci-fi territory and laugh-out-loud comedy. But it’s the powerhouse performances from its central cast that mark this as one to watch.

    Nimona

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    Shapeshifter Nimona can become anything she wants, a gift that causes people to fear and shun her. If society is going to treat her like a villain, she's going to be one, so she decides to become the sidekick of the hated black knight, Ballister Blackheart. Unfortunately for the aspiring menace, Blackheart isn't quite the monster he's made out to be, and he instead tries to rein in Nimona's more murderous tendencies as he seeks to clear his name of a crime he didn't commit—and face down his old friend Ambrosius Goldenloin in the process. Adapted from N. D. Stevenson's groundbreaking graphic novel, Nimona is more than just another fanciful fantasy—it's a tale of outsiders and exiles, people trying to do right even when their community rejects them, and the joy of finding their own little band along the way. After an almost decade-long journey to the screen, this dazzlingly animated movie has become an instant classic.

    The Boys in the Band

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    Set in New York City in 1968, The Boys in the Band is a snapshot of gay life a year before Stonewall brought LGBTQ+ rights to mainstream attention. When Michael (Jim Parsons, fresh from The Big Bang Theory) hosts a birthday party for his best frenemy Harold (Zachary Quinto), he’s expecting a night of drinks, dancing, and gossip with their inner circle—until Alan, Michael’s straight friend from college, turns up, desperate to share something. As the night wears on, personalities clash, tempers fray, and secrets threaten to come to the surface in director Joe Mantello’s tense character study. Adapted for the screen by Mart Crowley, author of the original stage play, this period piece manages to be as poignant an exploration of queer relationships and identities as ever.

    Cargo

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    In a world already ravaged by a zombie-like plague, Andy Rose (Martin Freeman) only wants to keep his family safe, sticking to Australia’s rural back roads to avoid infection. After his wife is tragically bitten, and infects him in turn, Andy is desperate to find a safe haven for his infant daughter, Rosie. With a mere 48 hours until he succumbs himself, Andy finds an ally in Thoomi (Simone Landers), an Aboriginal girl looking to protect her own rabid father. But with threats from paranoid survivalists and Aboriginal communities hunting the infected, it may already be too late. A unique twist on the zombie apocalypse, Cargo abandons the familiar urban landscapes of the genre for the breathtaking wilds of Australia and offers a slower, character-led approach to the end of the world.

    Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

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    The modern master of the macabre brings the wooden would-be boy to life like never before in this exquisitely animated take on Pinocchio. In a stop-motion masterpiece that hews closer to the original 1880s tale by Carlo Collodi than the sanitized Disney version, Guillermo del Toro adds his own signature touch and compelling twists to the classic story that make it darkly enchanting—expect a Blue Fairy closer to a biblically accurate many-eyed angel and a Terrible Dogfish more like a kaiju. It’s the decision to transplant the tale to World War II that’s most affecting though. Cast against the rise of fascism, with Gepetto mourning the loss of his son, the film is packed with complex themes of mortality and morality that will haunt audiences long after the credits roll. If that doesn't sell you, perhaps the fact that it won Best Animated Feature at the 2023 Academy Awards will.

    Call Me Chihiro

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    An idyllic slice-of-life movie with a twist, Call Me Chihiro follows a former sex worker—the eponymous Chihiro, played by Kasumi Arimura—after she moves to a seaside town to work in a bento restaurant. This isn’t a tale of a woman on the run or trying to escape her past—Chihiro is refreshingly forthright and unapologetic, and her warmth and openness soon begin to change the lives of her neighbors. Directed by Rikiya Imaizumi, this is an intimate, heartfelt character drama that alternates between moments of aching loneliness and sheer joy, packed with emotional beats that remind viewers of the importance of even the smallest connections.

    The Sea Beast

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    It's easy to imagine that the elevator pitch for The Sea Beast was “Moby Dick meets How to Train Your Dragon”—and who wouldn’t be compelled by that? Set in a fantasy world where oceanic leviathans terrorize humanity, those who hunt down the giant monsters are lauded as heroes. Jacob Holland (voiced by Karl Urban) is one such hero, adopted son of the legendary Captain Crowe and well on the way to building his own legacy as a monster hunter—a journey disrupted by stowaway Maisie Brumble (Zaris-Angel Hator), who has her own ambitions to take on the sea beasts. However, after an attempt to destroy the colossal Red Bluster goes disastrously wrong, Jacob and Maisie are stranded on an island filled with the creatures, and they find that the monsters may not be quite so monstrous after all. A rollicking sea-bound adventure directed by Chris Williams—of Big Hero 6 and Moana fame—it secured its standing as one of Netflix’s finest movies with a nomination for Best Animated Feature at this year's Oscars.

    Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

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    Daniel Craig reprises his role as detective Benoit Blanc in this brilliant follow-up to 2019’s phenomenal whodunnit, Knives Out. Writer-director Rian Johnson crafts a fiendishly sharp new case for “the Last of the Gentlemen Sleuths,” taking Blanc to a Greek island getaway for a reclusive tech billionaire and his collection of friends and hangers-on, where a planned murder mystery weekend takes a deadly turn. While totally accessible for newcomers, fans of the first film will also be rewarded with some deeper character development for Blanc, a role that’s shaping up to be as iconic for Craig as 007. As cleverly written and meticulously constructed as its predecessor, and featuring the kind of all-star cast—Edward Norton! Janelle Monáe! Kathryn Hahn! Leslie Odom Jr.! Jessica Henwick! Madelyn Cline! Kate Hudson! Dave Bautista!—that cinema dreams are made of, Glass Onion might be the best thing Netflix has dropped all year.

    The Wonder

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    Florence Pugh dazzles in this not-quite-horror film from Oscar-winning director Sebastián Lelio. Set in 1862, English nurse Lib Wright (Pugh) is sent to Ireland to observe Anna O’Donnell, a girl who claims to have not eaten in four months, subsisting instead on “manna from heaven.” Still grieving the loss of her own child, Lib is torn between investigating the medical impossibility and growing concern for Anna herself. Amid obstacles in the form of Anna’s deeply religious family and a local community that distrusts her, Lib’s watch descends into a tense, terrifying experience. Based on a book of the same name by Emma Donoghue, The Wonder is a beautiful yet bleakly shot period piece that explores the all-too-mortal horrors that unquestioning religious fervor and family secrets can wreak.

    RRR

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    One of India’s biggest films of all time, RRR (or Rise, Roar, Revolt) redefines the notion of cinematic spectacle. Set in 1920, the historical epic follows real-life Indian revolutionaries Alluri Sitrama Raju (Ram Charan) and Komaram Bheem (N. T. Rama Rao Jr.) but fictionalizes their lives and actions. Although they come from very different walks of life, their similarities draw them together as they face down sadistic governor Scott Buxton (Ray Stevenson) and his cruel wife, Catherine (Alison Doody). No mere period fluff, RRR is a bold, exciting, and often explosive piece of filmmaking that elevates its heroes to near-mythological status. Director S. S. Rajamouli deploys brilliantly shot action scenes—and an exquisitely choreographed dance number—that grab viewers’ attention and refuse to let go. Whether you’re a longtime fan of Indian cinema or just looking for an action flick beyond the Hollywood norm, RRR is not to be missed.

    I Lost My Body

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    An award winner at Cannes in 2019, this tale of burgeoning young love, obsession, and autonomous body parts is every bit as weird as you might expect for a French adult animated film. Director Jérémy Clapin charts the life of Naoufel, a Moroccan immigrant in modern-day France who falls for the distant Gabrielle, and Naoufel’s severed hand, which makes its way across the city to try to reconnect. With intersecting timelines and complex discussions about fate, I Lost My Body is often mind-bending yet always captivating, and Clapin employs brilliantly detailed animation and phenomenal color choices throughout. Worth watching in both the original French and the solid English dub featuring Dev Patel and Alia Shawkat, this one dares you to make sense of it all.

    The Mitchells vs. the Machines

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    Aspiring filmmaker Katie Mitchell (voiced by Abbi Jacobson) has a strained relationship with her technophobic father Rick (Danny McBride)—not helped by his accidentally destroying her laptop right as she’s about to begin film school in California. In an effort to salvage their relationship, Rick decides to take the entire Mitchell family on a cross-country road trip to see Katie off. Unfortunately, this road trip coincides with a robot uprising that the Mitchells escape only by chance, leaving the fate of the world in their hands. Beautifully animated and brilliantly written, The Mitchells vs. the Machines takes a slightly more mature approach to family dynamics than many of its genre-mates, with the college-age Katie searching for her own identity while addressing genuine grievances with her father, but it effortlessly balances the more serious elements with exquisite action and genuinely funny comedy. Robbed of a full cinematic release by Covid-19, it now shines as one of Netflix’s best films.

    Don’t Look Up

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    Frustrated by the world’s collective inaction on existential threats like climate change? Maybe don’t watch Don’t Look Up, director Adam McKay’s satirical black comedy. When two low-level astronomers discover a planet-killing comet on a collision course with Earth, they try to warn the authorities—only to be met with a collective “meh.” Matters only get worse when they attempt to leak the news themselves and have to navigate vapid TV hosts, celebrities looking for a signature cause, and an indifferent public. A bleakly funny indictment of our times, bolstered by a star-studded cast fronted by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, Don’t Look Up is, somewhat depressingly, one of the best portraits of humanity since Idiocracy.

    The 48 Best Shows on Netflix Right Now (October 2024)

    by: Matt Kamen, WIRED Staff

    Nobody Wants This, Heartstopper, and Ranma 1/2 are just a few of the shows you need to watch on Netflix this month.

    The 48 Best Shows on Netflix Right Now

    Nobody Wants This, Heartstopper, and Ranma ½ are just a few of the shows you need to watch on Netflix this month.
    A still taken from the Netflix Anime series Ranma 12.
    Still from Ranma1/2.Courtesy of Netflix

    Streaming services are known for having award-worthy series but also plenty of duds. Our guide to the best TV shows on Netflix is updated weekly to help you know which series you should move to the top of your queue. They aren’t all sure-fire winners—we love a good less-than-obvious gem—but they’re all worth your time, trust us.

    Feel like you’ve already watched everything on this list that you want to see? Try our guide to the best movies on Netflix for more options. And if you’ve already completed Netflix and are in need of a new challenge, check out our picks for the best shows on Hulu and the best shows on Disney+. Don’t like our picks or want to offer suggestions of your own? Head to the comments below.

    If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more.

    Ranma ½

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    One of Western anime fandom’s gateway drugs gets a 21st century makeover with a gorgeously animated remake of Rumiko Takahashi's legendary manga. Wisely keeping the original 1980s setting, this martial-arts-infused romantic comedy follows Ranma Saotome and Akane Tendo, each the heir to their family’s dojo, as they’re reluctantly promised to each other in marriage. The only problem? They can't stand each other. Well, maybe not the only problem—after falling into a cursed spring while training in China, Ranma also transforms into a girl whenever he's splashed with water, while his father turns into a panda, and archrival Ryoga shifts into an adorable piglet! Takahashi’s comedic genius remains timeless—a panda and a schoolgirl brawling through the streets of Tokyo is gloriously farcical—while production studio MAPPA (Chainsaw Man) impresses with slick animation that more accurately re-creates Takahashi's comic style.

    The Fall of the House of Usher

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    This miniseries from Midnight Mass creator Mike Flanagan isn't just an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's title work, but rather several of the master of macabre's pieces, brilliantly woven into a tapestry of terror. Like the title's source, this eight-episode event hangs on twin siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher, here reimagined as the rulers of a shady pharmaceutical empire, now with a sprawling family of descendants and squabbling heirs. The fun twist for Poe fans is that each member of the Usher clan is adapted from characters found in Poe's other works, including The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Masque of the Red Death, and, of course, The Raven, as they start falling victim to a variety of unsettling deaths, leaving the family founders to watch in despair as their empire crumbles. It's not just for grown-up goths or erudite emos though—everyone will get a creepy kick out of this delectably gothic twist on Succession. Perfect Halloween viewing.

    Nobody Wants This

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    Stop us if you've heard this one before: An agnostic sex podcaster and a Rabbi walk into a party … OK, it's not quite a setup for a joke, but rather for a sharp romcom—one based, in exaggerated form, on creator Erin Foster's own experiences. Joanne (Kristen Bell, The Good Place) is cynical and burned out on modern dating, even as it provides her material for the increasingly successful podcast she hosts with her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe). When she meets young, handsome Noah (Adam Brody, The OC), the attraction is instant and mutual—except he's just broken up with the stereotypical Nice Jewish Girl™ his family expected him to settle down with. Yet as the pair swirl through each other's lives, the show proves it's less about culture clash than it is exploring what the seemingly mismatched pair are willing to change and sacrifice to make their burgeoning relationship work. With sizzling chemistry between its leads, Nobody Wants This is a romcom with an emphasis on the romance.

    Heartstopper
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    One of the most joyful shows on Netflix returns for another school year of teen drama and heartfelt queer romance. In the long-awaited third season, things heat up between the central couple, with Charlie (Joe Locke) preparing to say three little words to Nick (Kit Connor) for the first time, while Elle (Yasmin Finney) and Tao (William Gao) try to have the perfect romantic summer before Elle starts art college. Heartstopper's return also sheds some of its earlier cloying tendencies, growing up alongside its talented young cast and giving them more serious material to work with, tackling more mature themes of sex, eating disorders, and gender dysphoria—all without losing the warmth and charm that made audiences fall in love with the show in the first place. The show younger LGBTQ+ viewers need now, older ones needed years ago, and one that everyone needs to watch, whatever their sexuality.

    Terminator Zero

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    Watch the above trailer for Terminator Zero and you might think it's merely an animated repeat of the highlights from James Cameron's first two Terminator films—and to an extent, you'd be right. But look beyond the familiar imagery of cyborg cops hunting down innocent humans and plucky resistance fighters pushing back against AI-driven extinction, and you'll find one of the sharpest entries in the Terminator franchise in years. The first half of this eight-episode series treads that familiar ground, with computer engineer Malcolm Lee (voiced by André Holland, English language; Yuuya Uchida, Japanese) and his children in 1997 Tokyo targeted by Skynet's murder-bots from the future for his work developing Kokoro (Rosario Dawson/Atsumi Tanezaki), an intelligence system to rival Skynet, which he somehow knows is set to bring about Judgment Day. With only human resistance soldier Eiko (Sonoya Mizuno/Toa Yukinari) able to protect them, there's plenty of the kinetic, visceral action that Terminator is known for. The back half, though, brings considerably more depth, tapping into the often overlooked hard sci-fi elements of the universe, exploring time travel and paradoxes alongside existentialist discussions on the nature of consciousness. The best balance of brains and brawn since Terminator II.

    Baby Reindeer

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    Stalking is no laughing matter, which makes this dramatized—and highly controversial—retelling of Scottish comedian Richard Gadd's own real-life experiences more than a little uncomfortable. Adapted from Gadd's one-man stage show of the same name, Baby Reindeer follows Donny (Gadd, playing a fictionalized version of himself) after he meets Martha (Jessica Gunning) at the pub he works at. Despite claiming to be a lawyer, Martha can't afford a drink—and a sympathetic gesture on Donny's part opens the door to increasingly obsessive and dangerous behavior as she proceeds to infiltrate his life. It's shockingly honest and self-aware in places—does Donny, and by extension Gadd, on some level relish the attention of his stalker? Are his occasional moments of kindness and warmth toward Martha inviting her further in? Is he using her, finding her a strange source of material for his stand-up career? A fiercely paced seven episodes, shot more like a horror movie, this Emmy-winning miniseries explores trauma and intimacy, shame and masculinity, and how society often silences the victims of abuse.

    Kaos

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    A modern twist on Greek mythology from creator Charlie Covell (The End of the F**king World, also worth your time on Netflix), Kaos sees Jeff Goldblum in impeccable form as Zeus, the irascible and mercurial king of the gods, reacting with calm and reason as humanity begins to dabble in blasphemy. Just kidding, he plans to wipe us out. While Covell brilliantly reimagines the Greek pantheon in the image of the disaffected wealthy families we’re more accustomed to seeing on vapid reality TV, the real genius is in weaving together countless figures and fables—including Billie Piper (Doctor Who) as tortured seer Cassandra, Aurora Perrineau and Killian Scott as Eurydice and Orpheus, Nabhaan Rizwan as chaotic party god Dionysus, and a brilliantly icy Janet McTeer as Hera, queen of the gods—into a sprawling tapestry that’s as darkly comedic as it is apocalyptically thought provoking.

    The Perfect Couple

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    This self-contained event miniseries headlines Nicole Kidman as Greer Garrison Winbury, frosty matriarch of an ultra-wealthy Nantucket family. A famous author, Greer is showing her disdain for her son’s bride-to-be in the WASPiest way possible—throwing them the most lavish wedding possible, all while sniping at everyone involved. But when a dead body is found, the Winbury’s long-buried secrets start flooding out. Part glossy soap, part murder mystery, this adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s novel of the same name shines by not taking itself too seriously—colorful dance numbers, bitingly funny dialog, and an edge of satire keep things lively, even at its darker moments. While the whole cast is a delight (including Liev Schreiber as Greer’s pet husband Tag and Eve Hewson as bride Amelia, with ever-decreasing patience for the rich-folk nonsense she’s caught up in), the real standout is Donna Lynne Champlin (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) as Detective Nikki Henry, investigating the case while providing a master class in how to just about hide withering disdain as she sizes up her self-absorbed suspects. Pulpy, campy, addictive viewing.

    The Boyfriend

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    "Anyone can fall in love with anyone" is the opening narration to The Boyfriend, Japan's first same-sex dating show—a bold and progressive statement that reflects the shifting tide of opinion in the country. Throwing nine single men together in an idyllic beach house for a summer and charging them with running a coffee truck, the over-arching concept is to see who'll pair up, but the series is as interested in exploring the friendships that emerge between the cast as it is the romantic relationships. Unlike Western dating shows, there are no scandals, no dramatic twists, no betrayals, and the “challenges” are adorably focused on confessing feelings. The gentleness of it all adds an almost relaxing quality, with the men discussing their emotions—and the nature of being queer in Japan—earnestly. An absolutely joyful example of reality TV.

    Kleo

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    If you’re pining for more Killing Eve, then this German thriller may be the next best thing. Set in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the series follows the eponymous Kleo (Jella Haase), a Stasi assassin imprisoned by her agency on false treason charges. Released after the fall of the Berlin Wall, she seeks revenge on her former handlers—but West German detective Sven (Dimitrij Schaad), the only witness to her last kill, may have something to say about that. As dark and violent as you'd expect given the period and the themes of betrayal and vengeance, Kleo is lightened by its oft-deranged sense of humor and a charismatic lead duo who brilliantly bounce off one another—chemistry that's only heightened in the second season as Kleo's pursuit of her old allies intensifies, attracting attention from international spy agencies in the aftermath of the Cold War.

    Sweet Home

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    Based on the Korean webcomic by Kim Carnby and Hwang Young-chan, Sweet Home offers a very different vision of apocalyptic end times—rather than pandemics, disasters, or even zombies, this posits an end of the world brought about by people's transformation into grotesque monsters, each unique and seemingly based on their deepest desires when they were human. The first season is a masterclass in claustrophobic horror, as the residents of an isolated, run-down apartment building—chiefly suicidal teen Cha Hyun-su (Song Kang), former firefighter Seo Yi-kyung (Lee Si-young), and Pyeon Sang-wook (Lee Jin-wook), who may be a brutal gangster—battle for survival. The second and third seasons explore what remains of the wider world, delving into the true nature of both monster and man—and if there's any hope for what remains of humanity. With phenomenal effects work blending prosthetics, CGI, and even stop-motion animation for some disturbingly juddering creatures, this stands apart from the horror crowd.

    The Decameron

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    Giovanni Boccaccio's 14th-century collection of tales might not sound like the best material for a TV show, but as reimagined by creator Kathleen Jordan, it's one of Netflix's most raucous comedies in years. As the Black Death ravages Europe, a group of nobles decamp to an isolated country estate, hoping to party while the world ends. Shocker: Everything goes horrifically wrong. And while there's plenty of carnage along the way, there's even more bawdy antics and awkward humor as some of the worst people in history are forced to live together. Lampooning the excesses of the rich and with a hilarious cast—including Girls' Zosia Mamet, Derry Girls' Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Arrested Development's Tony Hale, and Willow's Amar Chadha-Patel—The Decameron is a bloody good time.

    Star Trek Prodigy

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    Paramount+'s loss remains Netflix's gain, as the streamer's license rescue of this great Star Trek spin-off warps into its second season. After escaping a distant prison planet and becoming Starfleet cadets under the watchful eye of Star Trek Voyager's Admiral Janeway (voiced by the venerable Kate Mulgrew), the ragtag crew—led by aspiring captain Dal R'El and bolstered by astrolinguist Gwyndala, engineer Jankom Pog, energy being Zero, scientist Rok-Tahk, and indestructible, gelatinous Murf—find themselves cast through time on the most dangerous mission of their young lives. While aimed at younger audiences and intended as an intro to the wider Trek universe and its ethics, Prodigy packs in plenty for older Trekkers to appreciate, particularly with a slate of returning Star Trek legends voiced by their original actors. Prodigy is something of a sleeper hit, but one of the best Trek shows in years.

    Delicious in Dungeon

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    Take a large portion of Great British Bake-Off, blend with equal parts Dungeons & Dragons, add a dash of Lord of the Rings, and sauté for 25 minutes per portion—et voilà, you have a delectable serving of Delicious in Dungeon. Based on the manga by Ryōko Kui, the series follows adventuring swordsman Laios and his compatriots Marcille, an elven mage, and Chilchuk, a halfling locksmith, as they venture through a hazardous dungeon to rescue Laios' sister Falin. After finding themselves short on supplies, the party teams up with dwarven warrior (and master chef) Senshi, who provides a new way to survive the dungeon's endless threats: kill, cook, and eat every monster they encounter. A light-hearted comedy, Delicious in Dungeon lampoons the fantasy genre at every turn, while serving up delectable dishes in each episode that look so good, you'll wish they were real.

    Supacell

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    One by one, five Black Londoners awaken to strange superpowers. Struggling father Andre (Eric Kofi-Abrefa) develops superstrength, nurse Sabrina (Nadine Mills) unleashes phenomenal telekinetic might, drug dealer Rodney (Calvin Demba) races at superspeed, and wannabe gang leader Tazer (Josh Tedeku) turns invisible. But it's Michael (Tosin Cole, Doctor Who) who may be the most pivotal, realizing he can leap through time and space and learning he only has three months to save his fiancée's life. Created by Andrew “Rapman” Onwubolu, Supacell is a show about superpowers, but not necessarily superheroes, with its fantastic cast offering up a far more realistic and human exploration of now-familiar ideas than anything you'll find in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And the mystery of why—and how—only Black people seem to be gaining powers builds up to a more powerful punch than an Asgardian god of thunder. A smart, modern, and refreshing take on the genre.

    The Good Place

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    After suffering an improbable and humiliating death, Eleanor (Kristen Bell) finds herself in “The Good Place,” a perfect neighborhood inhabited by the world's worthiest people. The only problem? She's not meant to be there. Desperate to not be sent to “The Bad Place,” she tries to correct her behavior in the afterlife, with the help of her assigned soulmate, philosophy professor Chidi (William Jackson Harper). A twist at the end of the first season remains one of the best ever, while the show's ability to sprinkle ethical and philosophical precepts into a sitcom format is frankly astounding. With a sensational cast rounded out by Manny Jacinto, Jameela Jamil, D'Arcy Carden, and Ted Danson, The Good Place more than earns its place in the good place of TV history.

    Scavengers Reign

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    All too often, “adult animation” means either “sex jokes and F-bombs we can't do on Cartoon Network” or “let's copy anime.” Scavengers Reign isn't either of those things—this gloriously strange hard science fiction series has a visual style drawn more from European bandes dessinées, and impresses with writing that's equal parts imaginative, impactful, and thought provoking. The 12-episode series follows the crew from interstellar cargo vessel Demeter 227, stranded on the uncharted world of Vesta with seemingly no escape. (The bizarre creatures that call the planet home may be the least of the survivors’ concerns.) Originally commissioned, then unjustly canceled, by Max, this spectacular animated show deserves your attention (especially since Netflix may extend its run if enough people watch).

    Eric

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    Created and written by Abi Morgan (screenwriter of The Iron Lady and Suffragette), this psychological thriller follows TV puppeteer Vincent Anderson (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his wife Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann), left traumatized when their son Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe) goes missing. But while Detective Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III) investigates, brushing up against the darkest edges of Eric's 1980s New York setting, Vincent pursues other avenues—like bringing the giant puppet Eric, designed by Edgar, to life onscreen in order to lure his son home. The distraught actions of a desperate father? Maybe—but when Eric starts talking to Vincent, everything takes a far more surreal turn. While there are shades of the similarly imaginary-friend-tinged Happy! to Eric, this limited series leans more into themes of grief, loss, and the breakdown of relationships, material its cast almost uniformly mines to deliver star turns throughout.

    Bridgerton

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    Still ranking as one of Netflix’s most-watched series ever, Bridgerton is set during the Regency period in England and follows the powerful Bridgerton family as they navigate love, marriage, and scandal—with most of the latter stirred up by the gossip columns penned by the anonymous Lady Whistledown. Created for screen by Chris Van Dusen and executive produced by Shonda Rhimes, this incredibly bingeable and shockingly entertaining show is based on a series of novels by Julia Quinn, with each season focusing on a different branch of the Bridgerton tree. The third and latest season sees the spotlight fall on the long-simmering relationship between wallflower Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) and Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton), a pairing that threatens to reveal powerful secrets that have been bubbling away since the very first episode.

    Chicken Nugget

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    Some shows really make you stop and think about big, meaningful, existential questions. For example: "What is it like to live as a chicken nugget?" Adapted from a Korean webtoon by Park Ji-dok—whose other work includes a comic called Killer Farts, as a starting reference point—Chicken Nugget follows Choi Sun-man (Ryu Seung-ryong), president of technology company More Than Machines, and his eccentric intern Baek-joong (Ahn Jae-hong) as they seek a way to return Sun-man's daughter Min-ah (Kim You-jung) to human form after she's accidentally transformed into a … well, it's in the title. Look, there's no getting around how utterly weird this one is, but somehow, this incredibly surreal show somersaults over its bizarre premise to become an unexpectedly warm and endearing tale of human connection. Netflix's strangest series in years, but also oddly compelling.

    Bodkin

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    When American podcaster Gilbert Power (Will Forte) and his enthusiastic assistant Emmy Sizergh (Robyn Cara) descend on the sleepy Irish town of Bodkin—reluctantly aided by investigative journalist Dove Maloney (a brilliantly acerbic Siobhán Cullen, cussing out everyone who glances her way)—he thinks he's going to crack a decades-old missing-persons cold case. What he finds is a community with absolutely zero interest in his investigation, and even less in his attempts to “connect” with his Irish roots. But before long, the villagers' quirky behavior starts to feel stereotypical, performative even—and Power realizes the cold case may not be quite so chilly. Bodkin suffers from a slow start—give it at least two episodes before writing it off as not for you—but once this darkly comedic mystery gets going, you'll likely be just as invested as in your favorite true crime podcast. (Just don't take inspiration and try sleuthing any cold cases yourself.)

    3 Body Problem

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    In 1960s China, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, gifted scholar Wenjie Ye witnesses her physicist father being beaten to death for his research, only for her to be recruited to a secret project relying on that same knowledge. Fast-forward to the present day, and physics is broken: Particle accelerators around the world are delivering impossible data, while scientists are being plagued by countdowns only they can see. Meanwhile, strange VR headsets appear to be transporting players to an entirely different world—and humanity’s continued existence may rely on there being no “game over.” Game of Thrones’ creators D. B. Weiss and David Benioff and True Blood executive producer Alexander Woo reimagine Chinese author Cixin Liu’s acclaimed hard sci-fi trilogy of first contact and looming interplanetary conflict as a more global affair. Wildly ambitious, and boasting an international cast featuring the likes of Benedict Wong, Rosalind Chao, Eiza González, and GOT alum John Bradley, Netflix's 3 Body Problem serves up the opening salvo in a richly detailed and staggeringly complex saga.

    Parasyte: The Grey

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    Alien spores rain down on Earth, releasing aggressive larvae driven to burrow into other creatures' heads, devour the brain, and take control of the body. Once in possession, these parasites are indistinguishable from regular people—apart from the ability to warp the flesh and bone of their hosts' head into terrible weapons, which they use to hunt and consume humans from the shadows. Su-in Jeong (So-nee Jeon) almost became one of them, but when the parasite trying to take control of her exhausts itself saving her from a violent attacker, she’s left sharing her body with an increasingly self-aware monster. Helmed by Train to Busan director Sang-ho Yeon, this Korean drama expands the world established in Hitoshi Iwaaki's sci-horror manga Parasyte, building on its social and environmental themes even as it delivers a terrific, and often terrifying, slice of body horror.

    Ripley

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    Perhaps best known nowadays from 1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley starring Matt Damon, novelist Patricia Highsmith’s inveterate criminal Tom Ripley has a longer, darker legacy in print and on the screen. For this limited series, creator Steven Zaillian goes back to Highsmith's original text, presenting Ridley (a never-more-sinister Andrew Scott of All of Us Strangers) as a down-on-his-luck con man in 1950s New York who is recruited by a wealthy shipbuilder to travel to Italy and persuade the businessman’s spoiled son Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) to return home. But once in Italy, Ripley finds himself enamored with Dickie's lavish lifestyle—and will do anything to take it for himself. Shot in black and white to really sell its noir credentials, this is an instant contender for the finest interpretation of Highsmith's works to date.

    Girls5eva

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    Saving it from Peacock after two seasons, Netflix has gotten the band back together for this sharp comedy from creator Meredith Scardino. Twenty years after they split up, girl group Girls5Eva—Dawn (Sara Bareilles), Gloria (Paula Pell), Summer (Busy Philipps), and Wickie (Renée Elise Goldsberry)—find themselves back in demand after their one big hit is sampled by popular rapper Li'l Stinker (Jeremiah Craft). Turning their renewed popularity into an opportunity to reunite, the women try to gain the stardom, respect, and musical integrity they never had in their youth, even as life has taken them in very different directions. Poking fun at the absurdity of the late ’90s/early ’00s pop scene—and how little has changed since—and heightened by an almost surrealist edge in places, Girls5eva is a comedy that deserves its time in the spotlight.

    Avatar: The Last Airbender

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    A talented young cast bring to life the tale of Aang (Gordon Cormier), the latest in a long line of avatars who can control all four cardinal elements, but is frozen in time for a century when his world needed him most. Awakened by new friends Katara (Kiawentiio) and Sokka (Ian Ousley), he sets about continuing his training as the Avatar in an attempt to restore balance, all the while pursued by the relentless Prince Zuko (Dallas Liu), heir to the imperialist Fire Nation that has conquered the word. Consider this a cautious recommendation—the original animated version, also on Netflix, remains superior—but Netflix's live action Avatar remake serves up scale and spectacle, without betraying the heart of the classic show. It's also already confirmed for two more seasons, so viewers can look forward to the complete saga without the now-familiar Netflix cancellation worries.

    The Legend of Korra

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    If you're still not sold on the live-action Avatar, this sequel to the original series is well worth your time. Set 70 years after the animated Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra explores how Aang's world has progressed after decades of relative peace. When Korra, the new Avatar, moves to Republic City to complete her training under the tutelage of Tenzin—Aang's son, now with a family of his own—she finds herself and new friends Mako and Bolin caught in the growing tensions between element benders and the Equalist movement, who claim the unpowered are an oppressed class. As the series progresses over its four seasons, The Legend of Korra proves itself a very different beast than its predecessor, exploring political themes and social prejudices in deeper—and often darker—detail, while also expanding the more fantastic elements of the universe and revealing the origins of the first Avatar. Even more brilliantly animated, and with a unique 1920s inspired aesthetic, Korra is a show that grew up alongside its audience, and is all the stronger for it.

    Beef

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    Ever been cut off in traffic? Ever had it happen when you’re having a really bad day? Ever just wanted to take the low road, chase the person down and make them pay?! Then—after a few deep breaths—Beef is the show for you. It's a pressure valve for every petty grievance you’ve ever suffered, following rich Amy (Ali Wong) and struggling Danny (Steven Yeun) as they escalate a road rage encounter into a vengeance-fueled quest to destroy the other. Yet Beef is more than a city-wide revenge thriller—it's a biting look at how crushing modern life can be, particularly in its LA setting, where extravagant wealth brushes up against inescapable poverty and seemingly no one is truly happy. Part dramedy, part therapy, Beef is a bad example of conflict resolution but a cathartic binge watch that clearly resonates—as evidenced by its growing clutch of awards, including the Golden Globe for Best Limited Series.

    Loudermilk

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    Something of a sleeper hit for years—its first two seasons debuted on AT&T's now-defunct pay TV channel Audience in 2017, before its third season appeared over on Amazon—all three seasons of this bleak comedy are now available on Netflix. Ron Livingston stars as Sam Loudermilk, a vitriolic former music critic and recovering alcoholic who proves almost pathologically incapable of holding his tongue when faced with life's small frustrations—a personality type possibly ill-suited to leading others through addiction support groups. It's dark in places, and its central character is deliberately unlikeable, but smart writing and smarter performances shape this into something of an acerbic anti-Frasier.

    Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

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    Adapted from the beloved graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O'Malley, animated by one of the most exciting and dynamic studios in Japan, and voiced by the entire returning cast of director Edgar Wright's 2010 live-action adaption, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off would have been cult gold even if it was a straight retelling of its eponymous slacker's battles against lover Ramona Flowers' seven evil exes. Yet somehow, in a world devoid of surprises, this packs in killer twists from the very first episode, making for a show that's as fresh and exciting as ever. Saying anything else would ruin it—just watch.

    Bodies

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    Four detectives. Four time periods. Four murders? Maybe—but only one body. This time-twisting thriller—adapted from the comic of the same name by writer Si Spencer and artists Tula Lotay, Meghan Hetrick, Dean Ormston, and Phil Winslade—hops from Victorian London to a dystopian future and back again, as the same corpse is found in the same spot in each era. The only thing stranger than the impossible crime itself is the conspiracy behind it, one that spans decades, impacting and linking every figure investigating the body. A brilliantly high-concept sci-fi crime drama, Bodies is one of the best one-and-done limited series to hit Netflix in years.

    Pluto

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    Think you know Astro Boy? Think again. In 2003, Naoki Urasawa (Monster, 20th Century Boys) updated original creator Osamu Tezuka's hugely influential "The Greatest Robot on Earth" story arc for his manga Pluto, opting for a more adult approach. The focus shifts from the heroic boy robot to grizzled cybernetic detective Gesicht as he investigates a series of murders of both humans and robots, each victim left with makeshift horns crammed into their heads. Meanwhile, Atom (Astro's Japanese name) is recast as a former peace ambassador, effectively a propaganda tool rolled out at the end of the 39th Central Asian War, still dealing with trauma from the experience. This adaptation is not only a faithful recreation of Urasawa's retelling, but is stunningly animated to a standard rarely seen in Netflix's original anime productions. With eight episodes, each around an hour long, this is as prestigious as any live-action thriller the streamer has produced, and a testament to both Tezuka and Urasawa's respective geniuses.

    Blue Eye Samurai

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    In the 17th Century, Japan enforced its "sakoku" isolationist foreign policy, effectively closing itself off from the world. Foreigners were few and far between—so when Mizu (voiced by Maya Erskine) is born with blue eyes, nine months after her mother was assaulted by one of the four white men in the country, it marks her as an outsider, regarded as less than human. Years later, after being trained by a blind sword master and now masquerading as a man, Mizu hunts down those four men, knowing that killing them all is the only way to guarantee her vengeance. Exquisitely animated—which makes its unabashed violence all the more graphic—and with a phenomenal voice cast bolstered by the likes of George Takei, Brenda Song, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, and Kenneth Branagh, Blue Eye Samurai is one of the best adults-only animated series on Netflix.

    Pending Train

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    Netflix: License one of Japan’s best SF dramas in years. Also Netflix: Do nothing, literally nothing, to promote it, not even create an English subbed trailer. Which is where WIRED comes in—Pending Train is a show you (and Netflix) shouldn’t sleep on. When a train carriage is mysteriously transported into a post-apocalyptic future, the disparate passengers’ first concern is simply survival. Between exploring their new surroundings and clashing with people from another stranded train car over scarce resources, one group—including hairdresser Naoya, firefighter Yuto, and teacher Sae—begins to realize that there may be a reason they’ve been catapulted through time: a chance to go back and avert the disaster that ruined the world. A tense, 10-episode journey, Pending Train offers a Japanese twist on Lost, but one with tighter pacing and showrunners who actually have a clue where they want the story to go.

    One Piece

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    Mark one up for persistence: After numerous anime adaptations ranging from “awful” to “not too bad,” Netflix finally strikes gold with its live-action take on the global phenomenon One Piece. Despite fans’ fears, this spectacularly captures the charm, optimism, and glorious weirdness of Eiichiro Oda’s beloved manga, manifesting a fantasy world where people brandish outlandish powers and hunt for a legendary treasure in an Age of Piracy almost verbatim from the page. The perfectly cast Iñaki Godoy stars as Monkey D. Luffy, would-be King of the Pirates, bringing an almost elastic innate physicality to the role that brilliantly matches the characters rubber-based stretching powers, while the crew Luffy gathers over this first season—including swordsmaster Roronoa Zoro (Mackenyu), navigator and skilled thief Nami (Emily Rudd), sharpshooter Usopp (Jacob Romero Gibson), and martial artist chef Sanji (Taz Skylar)—all brilliantly embody their characters. A lot could have gone wrong bringing One Piece to life, but this is a voyage well worth taking.

    The Chosen One

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    Based on the comic American Jesus by writer Mark Millar (Kick-Ass, Kingsman) and artist Peter Gross (Lucifer), The Chosen One follows 12-year-old Jodie (Bobby Luhnow), raised in Mexico by his mother Sarah (Dianna Agron). While the young boy would rather hang out with his friends, his life—and potentially the world—changes forever when he starts exhibiting miraculous powers, attracting dangerous attention from sinister forces. While this could have been yet another formulaic entry in Netflix's expansive library of supernatural teen dramas (the Stranger Things vibe is particularly strong), the decision to shoot on film and in a 4:3 aspect ratio make this a visual delight, unlike almost anything else on the streamer at present. There's an English dub, but stick to the original Spanish with English subs for a better viewing experience. (Confusingly, there's another show with the exact same title on Netflix, a 2019 Brazilian series following a trio of relief doctors in a village dominated by a cult leader—also worth a watch, but don't get them confused!)

    Heartstopper

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    Arguably the most joyful show on Netflix is back for another school year of teen drama and heartfelt romance. With Charlie (Joe Locke) and Nick (Kit Connor) now officially dating, this long-awaited second season starts off with Nick struggling to come out as bisexual—but it’s openly-gay Charlie’s parents who seem to struggle the most with their relationship. Meanwhile, Elle (Yasmin Finney) and Tao’s (William Gao) will-they-won’t-they saga continues to sizzle, and a school trip to Paris turns into a crucible for everyone’s emotions. Although it steps into slightly darker terrain this season, the brilliant adaptation of Alice Oseman’s graphic novels continues to be an utter delight—the show younger LGBTQ+ viewers need now, older ones needed years ago, and that everyone needs to watch whatever your sexuality.

    Glitch

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    To those in the northern hemisphere, this Australian supernatural drama might be one of the best kept secrets of the last decade. Centred on a small town in Victoria, an entire community is shaken when seven people rise from their graves, seemingly in perfect health but with no memory of who they are or how they died. As police sergeant James Hayes (Patrick Brammall) and local doctor Elishia McKellar (Genevieve O'Reilly) try to contain and examine “The Risen,” Hayes’ world is rocked when he learns his own late wife Kate is among them. Over the course of three seasons and 18 episodes, the reasons for the dead’s return is teased out, starting with simply “how” and “why,” but building up to something that questions the rules of reality. A fantastic ensemble cast and brilliant pacing make this a must-see.

    Black Mirror

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    As creator Charlie Brooker recently told WIRED, “Black Mirror wasn't meant to be ‘this is what’s going on in technology this week.’ It was always designed to be a more paranoid and weird and hopefully unique show.” And that it is, but rather than displaying what’s going on in technology as it’s happening, the show has a way of beating its viewers to the paranoid punch, addressing dystopian anxieties before they even happen. (Black Mirror was talking about AI long before your mom ever heard of ChatGPT.) There are now six seasons of Brooker's show on Netflix, and if you haven’t watched, now may be the time. How else will you know what you’ll be worried about five years from now?

    Inside Man

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    Jefferson Grieff (Stanley Tucci) is a former criminology professor on death row for killing his wife, telling his story to a journalist named Beth (Lydia West). Harry Watling (David Tennant) is an unassuming English vicar, tending to his parishioners. The two men are a world apart—until a horrific misunderstanding leads to Watling trapping a friend of Beth's in his basement. As Watling's situation and mental state deteriorate, Beth turns to the killer for help finding her friend. Created and written by Stephen Moffat, this tense transatlantic thriller has just a dash of The Silence of the Lambs, and with a cast at the top of their game, it’s gripping viewing. Best of all, its tight four episodes mean you can binge it in one go.

    The Diplomat

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    If there's a West Wing-shaped hole in your life, look no further than The Diplomat—a tense geopolitical thriller elevated beyond the norms of the genre by a superb central performance by The Americans' Keri Russell as Kate Wyler, newly appointed US ambassador to the UK. Far from being an easy assignment in a friendly country, Kate's role coincides with an attack on a British aircraft carrier, leaving her to defuse an international crisis before it escalates into full-blown war. It's a job that might go easier if her own special relationship with husband Hal (Rufus Sewell) weren't fraying, as his resentment at being demoted leads him to interfere in her efforts. One of Netflix's biggest hits of 2023, The Diplomat has already been renewed for season two.

    Alice in Borderland

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    When slacker Ryohei Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) is mysteriously transported to a deserted Tokyo, his keen gaming skills give him an edge navigating a series of lethal games that test intellect as much as physical prowess. Yet after barely scraping through several rounds, Arisu is no closer to uncovering the secrets of this strange borderland, or to finding a way home—and the stakes are about to get even higher. Not only are Arisu and his allies Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya), Kuina (Aya Asahina), and Chishiya (Nijiro Murakami) faced with another gauntlet of sadistic games, but they find themselves caught between rival card suit “courts” vying for power—and not everyone can be trusted.

    With its willingness to kill off main characters at a moment’s notice, the first season of this gripping adaptation of Haro Aso’s manga kept viewers on tenterhooks throughout. As the long-awaited second season leans further into its twisted Alice in Wonderland imagery, expect more shocking developments in this taut thriller.

    Arcane

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    Let's be honest: Animated series based on video games often run the gamut from cheap cash-ins to half-decent if forgettable tie-ins, inaccessible to anyone but hardcore devotees. In contrast, Arcane stands apart from the crowd by making its connections to Riot Games' League of Legends almost optional. While its central figures, orphaned sisters Vi and Jinx, are playable characters in the game, viewers don't need foreknowledge of their story to enjoy this steampunk saga of class war, civil uprising, and the people caught in between. With a gorgeous painterly art style, strong characters, and frequently shocking story beats, Arcane defies its origins to become one of the best animated series in years—and it has racked up plenty of awards, including a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program, to prove it.

    The Sandman

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    The Sandman is one of the most beloved comic series of the past 40 years. A dark fantasy about dreams, reality, stories, and the mercurial relationship between them, Neil Gaiman's books have endured as essential reading for goth teens and literati alike. While attempts to bring the saga of Dream of the Endless—sometimes known as Morpheus, immortal embodiment and master of the nightlands, fierce and terrible in his wrath—to the screen have been underway practically since the comic debuted in 1988, this long-in-development Netflix adaptation is worth the wait. It’s a perfect translation of the first two graphic novels in the series and follows Dream (a sombre and imposing Tom Sturridge) as he restores his power and kingdom after being held in captivity for a century by occultists who snared him instead of his sister Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste). Fittingly, the show has a dreamlike pacing to it, blurring the lines between episodic narratives and longer arcs, and it is as likely to leave viewers crying over a gargoyle’s fate as it is to shock them with the sadistic actions of an escaped nightmare-turned-serial killer named the Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook). The Sandman’s journey to the screen might have been the stuff of restless nights, but the result is a dream you won’t want to wake up from.

    Stranger Things

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    Netflix's nostalgic sci-fi/horror series is back for its fourth season, set six months after the Battle of Starcourt and with its core cast separated for the first time. The Byers family and Eleven are off in California, Hopper is still (somehow) in a Russian prison, and the remaining crew are home in Hawkins, Indiana, about to face down a terrifying new threat—high school. Oh, and another incursion from the horrific Upside Down. The Duffer Brothers continue to offer up plenty of 1980s nostalgia for viewers who grew up on a diet of Spielberg, Lucas, and Craven, while upping the stakes with a significant new threat. Expect drama, scares, and—of course—plenty of Dungeons & Dragons as the cult show roars toward its fifth and final season.

    Russian Doll

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    In Russian Doll, Nadia has one very big problem: Time keeps breaking around her. Season one finds Nadia—played by Natasha Lyonne, who is also a cocreator on the show—dying at her own birthday party, only to wake up there over and over again, trapped in a Groundhog Day-style loop until she can unravel her personalized knot in the space-time continuum. Things only get stranger in season two, where Nadia finds herself traveling back in time to 1982 and inhabiting the body of her own mother—currently heavily pregnant with Nadia herself. Both seasons are funny and thought-provoking, reflecting on personal and generational trauma, all without overegging the potential for philosophical musing.

    Squid Game

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    Produced in Korea, Squid Game blends Hunger Games and Parasite with a battle-royal-style contest. Hundreds of desperate, broke people are recruited to a contest where they can win enough money to never need to worry about their debts again. All they have to do to win the ₩45.6 billion ($35.8 million) jackpot is complete six children’s games. But it’s not that simple: All the games have a twist, and very few people make it out alive. Squid Game is intense, brutal, and often very graphic, but it is also completely gripping. Netflix’s dubbing isn’t the best in this instance, but the nine episodes are compelling enough to make up for it.

    Lupin

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    Arsène Lupin, the belle epoque burglar created by French novelist Maurice Leblanc in the early 1900s, is reinvented as Assane Diop, a first-generation Frenchman with a mania for Lupin books and a grudge against the powerful forces who decades ago framed his father for a theft he didn’t commit—and led him to die in prison. Pairing drones, social media bots, and hacking skills with traditional tools of the trade like fake beards, picklocks, and quick wits, Diop hunts down his adversaries as he searches for the truth about his father’s fate. In his spare time, Diop also tries to patch together a crumbling marriage and build a better rapport with his son. Worth watching in the French original, this five-episode series’ strength lies in the dialog, the character development, and the charismatic performance of Omar Sy as Assane. The actual escapades and daring heists are beautifully choreographed, but a lot of the mechanics—how a certain piece of legerdemain worked, when an impenetrable building was infiltrated—are left to the viewer's imagination.

    California Is Flooding School Cafeterias With Vegan Meals—and Kids Like It

    by: Frida Garza

    Credit environmentally conscious students—and a handful of state funding programs.

    California Is Flooding School Cafeterias With Vegan Meals—and Kids Like It

    Credit environmentally conscious students—and a handful of state funding programs.
    Image may contain Food and Snack
    Photograph: Genaro Molina/Getty Images

    This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    Three years ago, Erin Primer had an idea for a new summer program for her school district: She wanted students to learn about where their food comes from. Primer, who has worked in student nutrition within California’s public school system for 10 years, applied for grant funding from the state to kick off the curriculum, and got it. Students planted cilantro in a garden tower, met a local organic farmer who grows red lentils, and learned about corn. “Many kids didn’t know that corn grew in a really tall plant,” said Primer. “They didn’t know that it had a husk.”

    The curriculum, focused on bringing the farm into the school, had an effect beyond the classroom: Primer found that, after learning about and planting ingredients that they then used to make simple meals like veggie burgers, students were excited to try new foods and flavors in the lunchroom. One crowd pleaser happened to be totally vegan: a red lentil dal served with coconut rice.

    “We have had students tell us that this is the best dish they’ve ever had in school food. To me, I was floored to hear this,” said Primer, who leads student nutrition for the San Luis Coastal district on California’s central coast, meaning she develops and ultimately decides on what goes on all school food menus. “It really builds respect into our food system. So not only are they more inclined to eat it, they’re also less inclined to waste it. They’re more inclined to eat all of it.”

    Primer’s summer program, which the district is now considering making a permanent part of the school calendar, was not intended to inspire students to embrace plant-based cooking. But that was one of the things that happened—and it’s happening in different forms across California.

    Students participate in an annual food-testing event for the Los Angeles Unified School District, with a menu that included vegan chickpea masala.

    Photograph: Genaro Molina/Getty Images

    A recent report shows that the number of schools in California serving vegan meals has skyrocketed over the past five years. Although experts say this growth is partly a reflection of demand from students and parents, they also credit several California state programs that are helping school districts access more local produce and prepare fresh, plant-based meals on-site.

    Growing meat for human consumption takes a tremendous toll on both the climate and the environment; the UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that livestock production contributes 12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, cattle and other ruminants are a huge source of methane. Animal agriculture is also extremely resource-intensive, using up tremendous amounts of water and land. Reducing the global demand for meat and dairy, especially in high-income countries, is an effective way to lower greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the rate of global warming.

    The climate benefits of eating less meat are one reason that school districts across the country have introduced more vegetarian—and to a lesser degree, vegan—lunch options. In 2009, Baltimore City Public Schools removed meat from its school lunch menus on Mondays, part of the Meatless Mondays campaign. A decade later, New York City Public Schools, the nation’s largest school district, did the same. In recent years, vegan initiatives have built upon the success of Meatless Mondays, like Mayor Eric Adams’ “Plant-Powered Fridays” program in New York City.

    But California, the state that first put vegetarianism on the map in the early 20th century, has been leading the country on plant-based school lunch. “California is always ahead of the curve, and we’ve been eating plant-based or plant-forward for many years—this is not a new concept in our state,” said Primer. A recent report from the environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth found that among California’s 25 largest school districts, more than half—56 percent—of middle and high school menus now have daily vegan options, a significant jump compared to 36 percent in 2019. Meanwhile, the percentage of elementary districts offering weekly vegan options increased from 16 percent to 60 percent over the past five years.

    A view of the greenhouse used for a Los Angeles magnet school’s after-school program focused on climate knowledge.

    Photograph: Allen J. Schaben/Getty Images

    Student nutrition directors like Primer say the foundation that allows schools to experiment with new recipes is California’s universal free lunch program. She notes that, when school lunch is free, students are more likely to actually try and enjoy it: “Free food plus good food equals a participation meal increase every time.”

    Nora Stewart, the author of the Friends of the Earth report, says the recent increase in vegan school lunch options has also been in response to a growing demand for less meat and dairy in cafeterias from climate-conscious students. “We’re seeing a lot of interest from students and parents to have more plant-based [meals] as a way to really help curb greenhouse gas emissions,” she said. A majority of Gen Zers—79 percent—say they would eat meatless at least once or twice a week, according to research conducted by Aramark, a company provides food services to school districts and universities, among other clients. And the food-service company that recently introduced an all-vegetarian menu in the San Francisco Unified School District credits students with having “led the way” in asking for less meat in their cafeterias. The menu includes four vegan options: an edamame teriyaki bowl, a bean burrito bowl, a taco bowl with a pea-based meat alternative, and marinara pasta.

    Stewart theorizes that school nutrition directors are also increasingly aware of other benefits to serving vegan meals. “A lot of school districts are recognizing that they can integrate more culturally diverse options with more plant-based meals,” said Stewart. In the past five years, the nonprofit found, California school districts have added 41 new vegan dishes to their menus, including chana masala bowls, vegan tamales, and falafel wraps. Dairy-free meals also benefit lactose-intolerant students, who are more likely to be students of color.

    Still, vegan meals are hardly the default in California cafeterias, and in many places, they’re unheard of. Out of the 25 largest school districts in the state, only three elementary districts offer daily vegan options, the same number as did in 2019. According to Friends of the Earth, a fourth of the California school districts they reviewed offer no plant-based meal options; in another fourth, the only vegan option for students is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “I was surprised to see that,” said Stewart.

    In their climate-focused after-school program, students learn about farm-to-table cooking, composting, greenhouse sciences, and more.

    Photograph: Allen J. Schaben/Getty Images

    Making school lunches without animal products isn’t just a question of ingredients. It’s also a question of knowledge and resources—and the California legislature has created a number of programs in recent years that aim to get those tools to schools that need them.

    In 2022, the state put $600 million toward its Kitchen Infrastructure and Training Funds program, which offers funding to schools to upgrade their kitchen equipment and train staff. This kind of leveling up allows kitchen staff to better incorporate “scratch cooking”—essentially, preparing meals on-site from fresh ingredients—into their operations. (The standard in school lunch sometimes is jokingly referred to as “cooking with a box cutter,” as in heating up and serving premade meals that come delivered in a box.) Another state program, the $100 million School Food Best Practices Funds, gives schools money to purchase more locally grown food. And the Farm to School incubator grant program has awarded about $86 million since 2021 to allow schools to develop programming focused on climate-smart or organic agriculture.

    Although only the School Food Best Practices program explicitly incentivizes schools to choose plant-based foods, Stewart credits all of them with helping schools increase their vegan options. Primer said the Farm to School program—which provided the funding to develop her school district’s farming curriculum in its first two years—has driven new recipe development and testing.

    All three state programs are set to run out of money by the end of the 2024–2025 school year. Nick Anicich is the program manager for Farm to School, which is run out of the state Office of Farm to Fork. (“That’s a real thing that exists in California,” he likes to say.) He says when state benefits expire, it’s up to schools to see how to further advance the things they’ve learned. “We’ll see how schools continue to innovate and implement these initiatives with their other resources,” said Anicich. Stewart says California has set “a powerful example” by bettering the quality and sustainability of its school lunch, “showing what’s possible nationwide.”

    One takeaway Primer has had from the program is to reframe food that’s better for the planet as an expansive experience, one with more flavor and more depth, rather than a restrictive one—one without meat. Both ideas can be true, but one seems to get more students excited.

    “That has been a really important focus for us. We want [to serve] food that is just so good, everybody wants to eat it,” Primer said. “Whether or not it has meat in it is almost secondary.”

    Google Chrome’s uBlock Origin Purge Has Begun

    by: Lily Hay Newman, Andrew Couts

    Plus: The alleged SEC X account hacker gets charged, Kroger wriggles out of a face recognition scandal, and Microsoft deals with missing customer security logs.

    Security News This Week: Google Chrome’s uBlock Origin Purge Has Begun

    Plus: The alleged SEC X account hacker gets charged, Kroger wriggles out of a face-recognition scandal, and Microsoft deals with missing customer security logs.
    Google Chrome Logo
    Photograph: Picture Alliance; Getty Images

    In what may be a first, the US Department of Justice this week charged a hacker with attempting to cause injury and death by launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against hospitals. Ahmed Omer and his brother Alaa are accused of carrying out a cyberattack spree that targeted hundreds of victims under the hacktivist banner Anonymous Sudan. The group’s DDoS victims included Microsoft’s Azure cloud services, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Israel’s missile alert system, according to prosecutors. It was the brothers’ alleged attacks on hospitals, however, that drew the most serious accusations from the Justice Department, which singled out Ahmed for allegedly seeking to kill people with the crude cyberattacks that overwhelm systems, knocking them offline.

    If someone told you there’s a tool that can—using only open source information—create a “cyber profile” of you that can locate your phone in real time or place you at the scene of a crime at any date in the past, would you believe them? Canadian firm Global Intelligence claims to have created such a tool, dubbed Cybercheck, which it has sold to police departments across the US. Cybercheck-generated reports have been used to help convict at least two people of murder. However, a WIRED investigation found that Cybercheck’s reports have produced information that is either inaccurate or impossible to verify. And open source experts say some of the information Cybercheck claims to include—such as a device’s pings to a specific wireless network—would be impossible to obtain from publicly available sources.

    The scourge of nonconsensual deepfake images has continued to proliferate, including on Telegram, where millions of people used “nudify” bots to “remove the clothes” of anyone—usually women and girls. A WIRED investigation identified 50 such bots and 25 channels linked to the creation of these abusive AI-generated explicit images. Telegram removed all 75 channels and bots after WIRED reached out, but many of them will likely respawn.

    The slow death of the password may have gotten a speed boost this week. The FIDO Alliance, a tech industry association, announced new efforts to help hasten the adoption of passkeys, the cryptographically generated codes that are already replacing less-secure passwords. These efforts include a new Credential Exchange Protocol, which makes it easier to migrate passkeys between platforms and devices, and Passkey Central, a resource for company IT departments that aims to make it easier for organizations to adopt passkeys.

    A group of researchers revealed this week that they created an algorithm that generates a malicious prompt capable of instructing an AI chatbot to identify personal information fed into it by a user and secretly send it to an attacker.

    Finally, we went back in time to explore how well the US Army’s “solider of tomorrow,” unveiled 65 years ago this week, predicted the future of US military tech.

    And that’s not all. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

    Google Chrome’s uBlock Origin Purge Has Begun

    If you use uBlock Origin’s Chrome extension to filter out online ads, expect to get mildly annoyed in the near future. Google has begun implementing new Chrome extension standards, called Manifest V3, that will disable the legacy version of uBlock Origin’s extension that most users likely have installed. And while you might be thinking, “Google is a silverback gorilla of online advertising, of course they’re finally forcing me to see ads!” there is some good news. A new version of the ad-filtering extension that meets the Manifest V3 standards, uBlock Origin Lite, is now available. Then again, it won’t block as much as the previous iteration of uBlock. Still, as a Google spokesperson told The Verge, you have options: “The top content filtering extensions all have Manifest V3 versions available — with options for users of AdBlock, Adblock Plus, uBlock Origin and AdGuard.” Either way, you’ll need to install a new extension soon.

    Alabama Man Charged in Hack of the SEC’s X Account

    US authorities announced charges this week against a 25-year-old Alabama man accused of hacking the Security and Exchange Commission’s X account. Prosecutors claim Eric Council Jr. obtained personal information and the materials for a fake ID of a person who controlled the @SECGov account from unidentified coconspirators. Council allegedly used the fake ID to carry out a SIM-swapping attack, duping AT&T retail store staff into giving him a new SIM card, which he ultimately used to take control of the victim’s phone account. The coconspirators used that to gain access to the SEC’s X account, where they posted a fake announcement about Bitcoin’s regulatory status, which was followed by a price jump of $1,000 per bitcoin. Council stands charged of conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud.

    Kroger Says It Won’t Use Facial Recognition in Its Grocery Stores

    The grocery store chain Kroger has never used facial-recognition technology broadly in its stores and has no current plans to, a spokesperson told Fast Company this week. The company has been facing a firestorm over its use of electronic shelving labels over concerns that ESLs could be used to impose surge pricing on popular items, and fears that the devices could also be deployed with facial recognition. The company did a single-store facial-recognition pilot of a technology called EDGE in 2019, but it did not move forward with the service. US lawmakers including Rashida Tlaib, Elizabeth Warren, and Robert Casey have publicly raised concerns about Kroger’s use of ESLs.

    Microsoft Is Missing More Than 2 Weeks of Cloud Customers’ Security Logs

    Microsoft told customers that it failed to capture more than two weeks of security logs from certain cloud services in September, including Microsoft Entra, Sentinel, Defender for Cloud, and Purview. News of the lost logs was first reported by Business Insider. The company said in the notification that “a bug in one of Microsoft’s internal monitoring agents resulted in a malfunction in some of the agents when uploading log data to our internal logging platform.” The blank extends from September 2 to September 19. A Microsoft executive confirmed to TechCrunch that the incident was caused by an “operational bug within our internal monitoring agent.”

    System activity logs are crucial for all sorts of operations and are particularly used for security monitoring and investigations, because they can expose breaches and malicious activity. After Russian hackers breached US government networks through SolarWinds software in 2020, many agencies couldn’t detect the activity in their Microsoft Azure cloud services because they weren’t paying for Microsoft’s premium tier features, so they didn’t have adequate network activity logs. Lawmakers were outraged about the up-charge, and the Biden administration worked for more than two years to get Microsoft to make the logging services free. The company ultimately announced the change in July 2023.

    Walmart Promo Codes: 65% OFF | October 2024

    by: Molly Higgins

    Get up to 65% off flash deals for 1000s of products with hand-picked deals for electronics, groceries, clothing, and more.

    Verified Walmart Promo Codes & Flash Deals for October 2024

    Save up to 65% off on 1000s of flash deals and verified Walmart coupon codes for trending items ranging from the new iPhone 16 Pro to everyday household items like groceries.

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    After living in big cities like San Francisco and New York, when I set foot in Wally World in the Midwest, I heard angels sing. Rows and rows of fluorescent lights highlighted any and every product needed for your house in one place. Screw the mom-and-pop bodega—I missed this level of convenience. If by chance they don’t have what you need in-store, there’s even more online, with pickup and delivery available.

    Save with Hand-Picked Walmart Promo and Flash Deals

    Walmart has flash deals that change weekly, with up to 65% off tech, appliances, end-of-season, and holiday items, so be sure to check often to find the best rotating deals. And if you’re like me, I’m always searching for the best tech deals without breaking the bank. Luckily, Walmart is offering up to $1,110 off the new iPhone 16 – with no Walmart coupon code needed. So whether you’re looking to purchase a new 17-piece non-stick cookware set, Dyson cordless vacuum cleaner, or this season’s latest clothing trends for men, women or children – Walmart is your one-stop shop for it all.

    You can also enjoy great benefits with Walmart+, a paid membership that gives early access to promotions and events like Walmart Black Friday deals, free delivery, free shipping with no order minimum, savings on fuel, streaming with Paramount+, and more. You can pay monthly or annually, and you’ll get a free trial of Walmart+ for 30 days to try it out. Walmart+ Assist helps qualifying government aid recipients get a membership at a lower cost.

    Flash Deals for Walmart Halloween & Fall Decorations

    With the spooky season quickly approaching, stay ahead of the game with scary-good decorations. Fortunately, you can shop at the Halloween shop at Walmart for all the decorations, inflatables, costumes, and more for up to 25% off. Even better, you can purchase a Walmart Halloween costume for as little as $5 for select styles, find decor sets for your front lawn for as little as $2, or stock up on some sweet treats for $5. Don’t miss out on these scarily good deals, and take advantage of these limited-time Walmart sales!

    Find Everything You Need (Without Breaking the Bank) at Walmart

    Where else can you buy a patio furniture set, baby formula, fertilizer, fill your eyeglass prescription, get a pedicure, the new iPhone 16 Pro or maybe a Subway sandwich? Walmart is where. God bless America. Now, you can get great deals on virtually everything above the internet’s seafloor cables, including great electronics like TVs, grills, and even 3D-printed pants for up to 65% off with Walmart’s flash deals or save as much as $260 off daily rollbacks.

    Dell Coupon Code: 10% Off Select Items

    by: Scott Gilbertson

    Get 10% off student essentials, such as Inspiron, XPS, and Alienware Gaming PCs, with a Dell coupon code.

    Dell Coupon Code: Students Get 10% Off in October 2024

    Students can save 10% on top products this October when they use a Dell coupon code.

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    Students, it’s the worst time of your life, you might as well save a little money. Just kidding, life only gets harder from here. Kidding. Again. Maybe. What is not a joke is this deal. Dell is giving students a 10% discount on things students need like Dell XPS laptops and Alienware gaming rigs. Don’t call them that when you tell your parents you need one. Just say it’s a Dell 32-inch 4K OLED Monitor, no need to say anything about gaming. It’s for your eyes, because they’re starting to bleed from all the term papers.

    10% Off Dell Coupon Code for Students

    Now, you do have to prove you are a student to get this deal. Just verify your .edu email address through this link and you’ll get not one, but two coupon codes. One is for 10% off Inspiron, XPS and Alienware Gaming PCs (shush, stop using that word), S Series monitors and Dell brand electronics and accessories. The second is for 5% off Latitude Laptops, OptiPlex Desktops, Precision PCs, Chromebooks, Ultrasharp Monitors, P Series Monitors, E Series Monitors, C Series Monitors, as well as third-party electronics and accessories Dell has in its store.

    How to Use a Dell Coupon

    Once you’ve added what you need to your your cart, navigate to the checkout page. There, you will see a field with the text “Enter Code.” Simply paste your code into this box and click “Apply.” Be sure to check for restrictions (like only select items being eligible for the discount) to guarantee you get the savings you’re after.

    Top Products and Deals from Dell

    Dell’s XPS laptops are perfect for students. They’re lightweight, small, and plenty speedy. They’re Windows’ rough answer to Apple’s Macbook Pro line. The XPS 14 and XPS 16 are some of our favorite laptops.

    If you’re a gamer, you probably already know that Dell makes Alienware, and the Dell Alienware m16 R2 is a powerful gaming machine masquerading as your next work laptop. It’s one of our favorite dual-use gaming rigs, making it perfect for students.

    When to Find the Best Dell Discounts

    The 10% off coupon will work any time, but Dell will also be running sales during the Black Friday/Cyber Money shopping extravaganza. This year, Black Friday is on November 29th, but be sure to look out for deals as they usually start rolling out before the big day.

    Other Ways to Save With Dell

    Don’t forget that, in addition to the Dell Promo Code we’ve got for you, you can save with the Dell Rewards program, which gets up to 3% back in rewards. Dell also offers free shipping and returns and has a price matching program if you find a lower advertised price somewhere else for an equivalent Dell.

    Dyson Promo Code: 20% Off October 2024

    by: Brenda Stolyar

    Get 20% off with Dyson promo code in October 2024. Browse flash discounts on cordless vacuums and save with today’s Dyson coupon codes from WIRED.

    Top Dyson Promo Codes for October 2024

    Get 20% off with our Dyson coupon code and save on cordless vacuums like the V12 Detect, V8, V15 Detect Absolute, and more.

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    Dyson's vacuums are top-tier for various reasons. They're powerful, easy to maneuver, bagless, lightweight, and more. But a majority of these vacs are also very expensive. If you've been waiting for one to go on sale, you're in luck. Right now (until December 31), you can get up to $220 off by using the link above. Save on cordless models on the Dyson website—a majority of which are listed as our top picks in our guide to The Best Dyson Vacuums.

    How To Use This Dyson Coupon

    While Dyson is known to release promo codes throughout the year, our top coupon for October 2024 doesn't require a code to unlock. All you have to do is click the coupon above and select “Visit Dyson” to snag up to $220 off. You'll then see a section titled “cordless vacuums,” which lists each model on sale, the discounted price, and how much you're saving. For the full list, click “Shop all cordless vacuum deals.” When you pick the one you want, you'll see the adjusted amount reflected in your cart at checkout once you add it.

    Get a 20% Off Dyson Promo Code through Rewards

    Dyson also has a Dyson Owners Rewards program, where you can save on select devices with a one-time-use 20% off promo code at checkout through its site. You'll have access to this code by registering your existing Dyson machine. The company also holds Dyson trade-in events at its demo stores where you can bring in any brand of vacuum (in any condition) to receive 20% off a future Dyson purchase.

    Our Favorite Dyson Vacuums

    Dyson offers tons of different cordless vacuums, so it can feel overwhelming to find the right one. As we mentioned earlier, a bunch of the cordless vacuums on sale are WIRED-approved. There's the V12 Detect Slim (8/10, WIRED Recommends) which is the best for small spaces; the Dyson V8 for those on a budget; and the Gen5Detect Absolute which is the best upgrade pick. The V7, which is also on sale, is a fine vacuum. But having launched in 2017, it's a much older model that isn't as powerful as the other options. You can read more about our experiences with each one in our Dyson buying guide.

    Other Dyson Coupons & October Deals

    Although any money off one of Dyson's vacuums is great, we always want to make sure you're choosing the best deal. The Dyson V15 Detect Absolute is currently at the lowest price we've seen for this model at $599 ($150 off). The Gen5 Detect Absolute, which is on sale for $750 ($200 off) is a solid deal, but we saw it dip lower to $650 back in June at third-party retailers. The same goes for the V8 Absolute. It's currently on sale for $299 ($220 off) through Dyson, which is a good deal, but we've seen it drop as low as $285 before. The Dyson Ball Animal 3 for $299 ($100 off) is also the lowest price we've ever tracked. So, if you don't want to spend more than $300 on a vacuum, there are plenty of options to get the job done.

    30% off Samsung Promo Codes - October 2024 Coupons

    by: Molly Higgins

    Save up to 30% with a Samsung promo code and enjoy huge savings on top tech! Verified Samsung deals from WIRED help you save on your favorite gadgets.

    The Best Samsung Promo Codes for October 2024

    Enjoy great savings at Samsung, like 30% off phones, $100 off every time a friend uses your referral code, up to $2,700 off TVs, and more.

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    Samsung makes everything from gaming monitors to dishwashers. I'm always looking for a sale (I’m assuming you are, too), and I've found the best Samsung promo codes to help you save big on your most important tech purchases. At WIRED, we often review the South Korean company’s products, especially Samsung’s vast lineup of Galaxy smartphones, and I've rounded up a bunch of Samsung coupons for (virtually) every type of shopper.

    Save On The Latest Tech With a Samsung Promo Code

    One of the hottest Samsung promo codes is a whopping 30% discount for government employees, first responders, military personnel, and educators. Samsung also has offer programs, meaning you can combine your promo code discount with most other offers to increase discounts. Get a pal involved for more savings—when a friend uses your referral code to make a purchase at Samsung.com, they'll get 5% off their purchase (up to $250 off) and you’ll get up to $100 off per order (with the potential to save $1,000 per calendar year). My insider tip is to sign up for a Samsung Rewards account for even more perks, including exclusive Samsung coupons, flash sales, and updates on the newest Samsung products, like the QLED 8K, select refrigerators, and other home appliances.

    Shop The Best Samsung Deals Today

    Right now, Samsung has some of the best deals I've ever seen on their best-selling tech. You can save up to $2,800 on select OLED TVs and get up to $2,200 off on select Neo QLED 4K TVs. You can also get up to $750 in enhanced trade-in credits on the Galaxy S24 Ultra, which WIRED reviews editor Julian Chokkattu rated 8/10 because of its new AI features powered by Google’s Gemini and adaptable settings.

    There are a bevy of Samsung promo codes, from discounts for educators to friend referral codes, to help you save on everything from soundbars to wireless chargers to Samsung’s highly anticipated health-based wearable Galaxy Ring.

    Save on a Samsung Galaxy Watch

    Our team has been putting Samsung's wearables through the paces, and we're impressed by the lineup's blend of style and substance. From the trail-ready Galaxy Watch Ultra to the AI-powered Galaxy Watch7 for health nerds, Samsung's got a smartwatch to match your tech appetite and fitness ambitions. And with Samsung's current deals, you can strap one on for less than you might think.

    We've tracked down some serious savings across the Galaxy Watch range. Think substantial trade-in credits and instant discounts that'll have you checking your wrist instead of your wallet. These aren't just pretty faces, either—with features like AI-powered sleep coaching, real-time heart rate zones, and body composition analysis, these watches are like having a personal health lab on your arm. Plus, seamless Galaxy ecosystem integration means you can take calls, fire off texts, and even snap photos with your smartphone camera, all from your wrist. It's the kind of futuristic tech that has us at WIRED geeking out.

    Stay Up to Date On All Things Samsung at WIRED

    WIRED also has guides to help determine which Galaxy S24 phone is best for you and how to set up your Samsung to ensure you’re getting the most out of your phone, as well as advice on which Galaxy S24 series accessories, like cases, chargers, and power banks, are worth the money.

    Us nerds here at WIRED also follow CES (sort of the Coachella for tech nerds) for all the updates on tech (almost) no one asked for, and Samsung’s bi-annual Galaxy Unpacked event, where they show off its newest toys. We have a lot of opinions about Samsung's foldable Galaxy Z Flip6 and Z Fold6 phones.

    The Disinformation Warning Coming From the Edge of Europe

    by: Morgan Meaker

    Moldova is facing a tide of disinformation unprecedented in complexity and aggression, the head of a new center meant to combat it tells WIRED. And platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Telegram and YouTube could do more.

    The Disinformation Warning Coming From the Edge of Europe

    Moldova is facing a tide of disinformation unprecedented in complexity and aggression, the head of a new center meant to combat it tells WIRED. And platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Telegram, and YouTube could do more.
    Artistic collage Maia Sandu social media disinformation Eastern Europe
    PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: WIRED STAFF; GETTY IMAGES

    A TikTok video of actor Brian Baumgartner, from the American version of The Office, calling for the overthrow of the president of a small European country was an early sign that this would be no ordinary election.

    Late last year, Baumgartner appeared among a lineup of American celebrities addressing Maia Sandu, the current, pro-European president of Moldova and proclaiming in bad Russian: “We, Hollywood stars, support the people of Moldova in their desire to overthrow you, Sandu.” These weren’t deepfakes. Instead the videos—which researchers suggested were part of a pro-Kremlin influence operation—were commissioned on Cameo, the app that lets anyone buy personalized greetings from celebrities. Neither Cameo nor Baumgartner’s representatives replied to WIRED’s request for comment.

    For years, Moldova—a country similar in size to the US state of Maryland, sandwiched between the EU and Ukraine—has complained of Russian meddling. But more recently, as this former Soviet state prepares for a pivotal presidential vote and referendum on whether to join the EU, the country has become a cautionary tale about how the world’s biggest social media platforms can be exploited to create and fund a complex disinformation operation that sows discord around some of a society’s most divisive subjects.

    Since war broke out in neighboring Ukraine two years ago, bots have been scouring the Moldovan internet, searching for authentic content to boost to wide audiences, such as videos of Ukrainian-refugees behaving badly. Then ordinary Moldovans complained their Facebook feeds were being inundated with political, often anti-government ads launched by pages with Vietnamese names. A year later, researchers estimated Meta had earned at least $200,000 from a pro-Kremlin ad campaign targeting Moldova alone. Russia’s foreign ministry did not reply to WIRED’s request to comment.

    “It’s unprecedented in terms of complexity,” says Ana Revenco, Moldova’s former interior minister, now in charge of the country’s new Center for Strategic Communication and Combating Disinformation. What’s happening in Moldova on Facebook, Telegram, TikTok, and YouTube, she believes, carries a warning for the rest of the world. “This shows us our collective vulnerability,” she says. “Platforms are not only active here. If [Russia] can use them here, they can use them everywhere.”

    Ahead of the vote on Sunday, accounts linked to Russia have reached new levels of aggression, Revenco says. “They activate accounts that have been created long ago and have been on standby,” she explains. “They are engaging bots, and they're synchronizing posts across multiple platforms.”

    The EU referendum is a pivotal moment for Moldova. On Sunday, voters will face a yes or no choice on whether their country should enshrine its intention to eventually join the EU in its constitution and allow President Sandu to seek closer ties with the bloc, a move prompted by the war in Ukraine. A yes vote “would create the legal guarantee for the country to move towards the European Union, irrespective of governments in the future,” says Iulian Groza, executive director of the Institute for European Policies and Reforms, a nonprofit that wants to accelerate Moldova’s integration into Europe.

    Polls suggest 55 percent of Moldovans support joining the EU. But more than one-third of eligible voters must turn up at the polling stations for the vote to be valid. That means pro-Kremlin forces in the country are encouraging people not to vote at all on Sunday, says Groza. “Those who campaign to boycott the vote, basically campaign for the referendum not to pass.”

    Revenco believes there is evidence that Russia is behind the disorientating amount of online activity. “Police investigations throughout the last two years clearly saw the connection with the organized criminal groups, including those who are on the international sanctions list,” she says. “This investigation traces their connections indeed to Russia, including the military ecosystem, banking ecosystem, and financial, including those banks that are also on the international sanctions list.”

    In October, police announced the seizure of piles of cash and mobile phones they linked to organizations associated with Ilan Shor, a fugitive Moldovan oligarch, living in exile in Russia. Police said these affiliates were preparing to organize vote-buying through Telegram—an allegation Shor called an “absurd spectacle.” On Telegram, bots have been offering up to $280 to people who post on Facebook against joining the EU. “They are outsourcing disinformation,” says Victoria Olari, research assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, who is based in Moldova’s capital, Chișinău. “They're being paid to make posts for their friends, for their close circle of people.”

    Olari described the Telegram bot as an example of how brazen Russia had become in Moldova. "This is the first time Russia is not hiding anymore; they are doing this openly,” she says. Government officials claim Russia spent around €50 million ($54.3 million) on election interference last year, with the amount expected to more than double by the end of 2024, according to Revenco.

    Revenco says her team has been trying to reach out to social media platforms about the problems. “Communication is much better than, let's say, one year ago.” Yet there is still room for the platforms to do much more, she says.

    The narratives she sees circulating are designed to increase anti-EU sentiment, pro-Russia sentiment, but also anti-Ukrainian sentiment, she adds. “AI is used in order to multiply the messages and reach out to a greater audience in a short time.” Revenco did not provide specific examples, but a deepfake video featuring President Sandu has been circulating on Telegram, according to think tank Watchdog MD, even as the polls suggest Sandu will be reelected this weekend.

    Earlier this month, Meta said it had removed Facebook and Instagram accounts centered around a dozen fictitious, Russian-language news brands. The fake accounts behind this activity posted original content, including cartoons and criticism of President Sandu, Meta said in a statement. “The operators also posted about offering money and giveaways, including food and concert tickets, if people in Moldova would follow them on social media or make graffiti with the campaign’s brand names.” Telegram, TikTok parent Bytedance, and YouTube parent Alphabet did not respond to WIRED’s questions about the steps they’d taken to limit disinformation in Moldova ahead of the vote.

    Although Telegram did remove accounts linked to Shor earlier this month, at the authorities’ request, Revenco does not seem impressed by the platforms’ efforts overall. “The fact that [disinformation] continues to be present and very creative in terms of using various capabilities of these networks once again proves that the efforts undertaken so far are not sufficient.”

    $30 OFF VistaPrint Coupons & Promo Codes for October 2024

    by: Molly Higgins

    Get $30 off any $200+ order with hand-picked VistaPrint promo codes for custom business cards, posters, stationery, t-shirts & more.

    VistaPrint Coupon for October 2024: $30 Off Any Order

    Whether you need products for your small biz or want personalized gifts, use this VistaPrint promo code to save $30 when you spend $200 or more.

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    VistaPrint specializes in custom physical and digital marketing products for small businesses, like brochures and promotional products, along with personal products like invitations and posters to meet any print and online personalization needs you may have. Take advantage of the our VistaPrint coupon PROMO to get $30 off orders of $200 or more to save on items like a hyper-specific personalized gag gift for your family’s white elephant gift exchange or VistaPrint business cards for your super legit MLM scheme. VistaPrint has a vast array of products and services for any need.

    Save With These Current VistaPrint Promo Codes and Deals

    Free shipping is available on orders over $100. Plus, as a first-time customer, you can get 25% off your first order, all you need to do is use code NEW25 at checkout. If you sign up for texts, you can get 15% off your next order. VistaPrint also offers premium memberships which renew annually and are ideal for small businesses and people who use services frequently. Members get up to 40% off products, free shipping on all orders over $60, 30% off Deposit photo subscriptions, unbranded products and packaging, and global discounts. Best of all, you can try these services free for 30 days. Be sure to check out our VistaPrint voucher codes and discounts page to see the rotating available discounts.

    How to Redeem a VistaPrint Coupon

    Whether you’re looking for the best deal on custom VistaPrint business cards for your small business or you’re looking to order custom t-shirts for your family reunion, it’s simple and easy to apply a coupon for your next VistaPrint order. Luckily, you can use our TAKE10 VistaPrint voucher code for $10 off your next order of $80 or more. All you have to do is copy the code and paste it in the allotted area at checkout. Be sure to also look out for other trending VistaPrint deals that don’t require a code to redeem your savings on your purchase. In the case of a limited-time promotion, just add the promo item to your cart to instantly save.

    Save on Trendy VistaPrint Custom Items

    When you find the discount you want to use, like $10 off orders of $80 or more, input the VistaPrint voucher code TAKE10 at checkout to save. VistaPrint has been with me through the years—for thank you cards, mugs of my friends’ faces as gifts, calendars to make myself a centerfold, family photo books, wedding invitations and subsequent divorce party invites. What can I say, I live a charmed life—and VistaPrint has been there through it all. It has been my consistent go-to for personalized products for the past decade, offering good prices on all my odd-ball creations. Go ahead, check it out, you know you’ve always wanted to eat off a plate or sleep on a pillow with your loved one’s face on it.

    Social Media Swallowed Gen Z. This Film Shows Exactly How

    by: Jason Parham

    Lauren Greenfield, director of the docuseries Social Studies, says we have to have empathy for teens growing up online. “It's not fair to ask them to self-regulate when the apps have been designed to be addictive.”

    Social Media Swallowed Gen Z. This Film Shows Exactly How

    Lauren Greenfield, director of the docuseries Social Studies, says we have to have empathy for teens growing up online. “It's not fair to ask them to self-regulate when the apps have been designed to be addictive.”
    Lauren Greenfield
    PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: WIRED STAFF; GETTY IMAGES

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    Twenty years ago, MySpace and Facebook ushered in an inspired age of social media. Today, the sticky parables of online life are inescapable: Connection is a convenience as much as it is a curse. A lot’s changed since those early years. In June, the US surgeon general, Vivek H. Murthy, called for a warning label on social platforms that have played a part in the mental health crisis among young people, of which “social media has emerged as an important contributor.” Social Studies, the new FX docuseries from documentarian Lauren Greenfield, bring the unsettling effects of that crisis into startling view.

    The thesis was simple. Greenfield set out to catalog the first generation for which social media was an omnipresent, preordained reality. From August 2021 to the summer of 2022, she embedded with a group of teens at several Los Angeles–area high schools for the entire school year (the majority of the students attend Palisades Charter), as they obsessed over crushes, applied to college, attended prom, and pursued their passions.

    “It was an unusual documentary for me,” Greenfield, a veteran filmmaker of cultural surveys like The Queen of Versailles and Generation Wealth, says of how the series came together. “The kids were co-investigators on this journey.” Along with the 1,200 hours of principal photography Greenfield and her team captured, students were also asked to save screen recordings of their daily phone usage, which amounted to another 2,000 hours of footage. Stitched together, the documentary illuminates the tangled and unrelenting experiences of teens as they deal with body dysmorphia, bullying, social acceptance, and suicidal ideation. “That’s the part that is the most groundbreaking of this project, because we haven’t really seen that before.”

    The depth of the five-episode series benefits from Greenfield’s encyclopedic approach. The result is perhaps the most accurate and comprehensive portrait of Gen Z’s relationship to social media. With the release of the final episode this week (you can stream it on Hulu), I spoke with Greenfield over Zoom about the sometimes cruel, seemingly infinite experience of being a teenager online today.

    JASON PARHAM: In one episode, a student says, “I think you can’t log in to TikTok and be safe.” Having spent the previous three years fully immersed in this world, I’m curious if you think social media is bad?

    LAUREN GREENFIELD: I don't think it's a binary question. I really went into this as a social experiment. This is the first generation that has never grown up without it. So even though social media has been around for a while, they are the first generation of digital natives. I thought it was the right time to look at how it was impacting childhood. It’s the biggest cultural influence of this generation’s growing up, bigger than parents, peers, or school, especially coming out of Covid, which was when we started filming. You know, I didn't go into filming with a point of view or an activist agenda, but I certainly was moved by what the teenagers said to me and what they showed in their lives, which is that it's a pretty dire situation.

    Without a doubt.

    Jonathan, in episode five, says it's a lifeline, but it's also a loaded gun. So I don't think it's about whether there are good things in it and bad things. We see both in the show, but we also would not let our kids be around a loaded gun. So I do think that we need to change the engineering of it so that we can keep the good and not have the bad.

    I entered high school in 2000, before the social media boom, and I always joke with friends how I probably would not have survived if we had it the way kids do now.

    The genie is out of the bottle. But there is regulation now to get rid of it in schools, which I think is great. We also see the problem of distraction in the show. And we see the need of this generation for person-to-person connection, which they don't have enough of. We've also seen how for people like Nina, LGBTQ+, even some of the social justice reactions that happen in the series, it has a use. It also is a means of creativity and entrepreneurship. And we see that with our characters too.

    But there are also just things that make life extremely toxic for teenagers—the 24/7 comparison culture, the algorithm bringing them down harmful paths of learning. What some of the new information coming out of TikTok’s internal research shows us is that these apps are engineered and they can be engineered differently.

    Have you seen the Jim Henson movie? It’s called Idea Man.

    No, I haven’t.

    One thing that really moved me that I thought was relevant to social media and thinking about the good and bad of it, is that Joan Ganz Cooney—the TV producer who started Sesame Street—had this idea of bringing in people who know what kids love, which was Jim Henson and the creatures, with people who know what kids need to learn and what they need. It’s that second piece that has never been relevant to tech designers and engineers who have only been designing for maximum engagement, even if it's at the expense of the health and well-being of young people. We have a mental health crisis on our hands because of it. Technology is important and important for so many reasons, but I think we have an untenable situation with the current engineering of social media.

    So you’re saying we need even more guardrails?

    Now having filmed the show—and I hope people get it—we have to have empathy for these teenagers. Like, it's not fair to ask them to self-regulate when the apps have been designed to be addictive.

    How did you land on Los Angeles as the petri dish for this social experiment?

    I've been looking at youth culture for 30 years. My first book, Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood explored how kids were influenced by the values of fame, image, and materialism. Those themes are also really relevant in the social media age. Fame is something that is not for celebrities anymore, it's for every kid looking for likes. And likes have become a rite of passage, in terms of popularity. Image making, FaceTune, Photoshop, styling, curating your brand—all of these things that used to be the realm of celebrities are now the realm of everyday children. And a lot of times in my work, I'm trying to document the air we breathe, the popular culture that's all around us. Sometimes it's hard to see. So for me, with LA, I wanted to look at where that was the most pure and strong, rather than where it was average.

    The point of view shifts between students and parents. Ivy’s mom in particular has very sharp views about trans people, vaccines, and politics. Why also include their voices in a series so acutely focused on teen life?

    When I started, I didn't know I was going to include the adults, but they ended up being so important. There are a lot of loving, caring parents in the show who have no idea what's going on in the social media lives of their kids. I didn't know a lot as a parent either. I think that the show is very entertaining for teenagers, twentysomethings, and thirtysomethings. For parents, it's more of an education and I hear more of them being shocked by it. It was important to see the disconnect between this generation and their parents, how much things have changed, and how much parents don't realize what's going on.

    Many of the kids started taking action into their own hands.

    One of the most important things I came out of this with is, parents, teachers, and administrators are not addressing the problems. They might not even understand the problems. So we get this world of young people helping each other. We have Jonathan, Cooper, and Dominic all working at a crisis hotline doing peer counseling for kids in distress. We have Anthony who becomes a vigilante because he's so frustrated that nobody's doing anything about the racist incidents and sexual assault that he’s seeing. And we have kids also making media, like Cooper having a podcast about body image. That stuff is sprouting up because they're very alone in this.

    Why do you think there is such a disconnect?

    They’re just from a different generation. My youngest, who is 20, I remember I would ask to see stuff. And this was in the earlier stages of social media. You know, I kind of demanded that he would show me. But he refused. He had a different view of everything. He felt it was his private space. We need to move off that and open up a dialog. This show, it's really meant more to open dialog rather than have solutions, even though the kids give us some solutions. But the parents are an important part of the equation.

    Like Ivy’s family?

    Ivy's family story was a really important social media story. It's kind of the story of the division that we're seeing in our culture now—how algorithms and silos take us into these different ways of thinking and split us apart, how they make the other the enemy. We’re seeing how terrible the disinformation problem is, how tragically it could affect all of us in this election. Their story came about very unexpectedly. But I thought it was fascinating, and getting to know all the members of that family, you can see how both parents love their kids, how both kids love their parents. I didn't want to vilify anybody. But we also see how tragic it is when ideas and algorithmic silos divide family members.

    Watching the series made me wonder if these kids are doomed, in a sense, because they are so beholden to platforms like TikTok and Snap. It’s all they know. Is this a tragic story?

    No, I don't think so. The hope we see in episode five and their resilience is a testament to the resilience of this generation and the way they can help us carve a path forward. If anything, the adults have been a little bit irresponsible and kind of unknowing. The tech companies have been downright irresponsible. Safeguards like we have in all other media have been missing. Not to point fingers, this is a medium that has come up very quickly—

    Please point fingers.

    Look, it's relatively new what we're learning. In episode five, Sydney says, “Once we knew the harm of cigarettes with lung cancer, there was change made, there was regulation. And now we know there's a connection between social media, mental health, eating disorders, and suicidal ideation.” So once this knowledge is here, we have to act. To me it's very hopeful, and I know at the end the kids are like, “What do we do? We can't live without it.” But understanding that ​​there are actually a lot of things that can be done, between regulation, between asking tech companies to change the algorithm, and also legally if they were responsible for their publishing, like every other publisher, we might be in a different space.

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    The Physics Trick That Makes These New Super Cars So Insanely Fast

    by: Rhett Allain

    Zero to 60 in 1.4 seconds? By lowering air pressure under the car, automakers can dial the acceleration way up.

    The Physics Trick That Makes These New Super Cars So Insanely Fast

    Zero to 60 in 1.4 seconds? By lowering air pressure under the car, automakers can dial the acceleration way up.
    Image may contain Machine Wheel Tire Car Transportation Vehicle Alloy Wheel Car Wheel Spoke Coupe and Sports Car
    A Porsche 911 Carrera on the track in Tooele, Utah.Photograph: D. Lentz/Getty Images

    People with fast street cars like to put them through their paces at the quarter-mile track. One way to get your quarter-mile time is to just buckle up and put the pedal to the metal. But if your car's design is suboptimal, you won't be taking home the bragging rights.

    So here's this week's question: Can automotive engineers predict a car's quarter-mile time using physics? And could the physics suggest some tricks to make a car faster? Yes and yes! Let's see how.

    Simple Model for an Accelerating Car

    When a car launches off the start, its increase in speed is described by its acceleration (the rate of change of velocity). But according to Newton's second law, to increase velocity, you need a force pushing in the direction of travel.

    We can model the motion of a car with just three forces. There's the downward-pulling gravitational force (= mass, m, times the gravitational field, g). There is also the interaction between the car and the road. It's useful to split this into two forces: One, perpendicular to the ground, is called the “normal force” (FN). It's the resistance of the ground to gravity—what keeps a car from plunging to the center of the Earth. The other force, friction (Ff), acts parallel to the ground. Here's a picture:

    It's the forward-pushing frictional force that makes the car accelerate. (Yes, this is powered by the engine, but the force is exerted where the rubber hits the road.) This frictional force depends on two things: the types of surfaces interacting, captured by a friction coefficient, μ, and the normal force (FN) pushing these surfaces together. With that, we get the following maximum frictional force:

    The frictional force that drives the car ahead depends on the specific materials in contact (captured by a friction coefficient, μ) and the normal force.

    We can quantify this by looking up the friction coefficient (around 0.7 for tires and asphalt) and calculating the normal force. Since the car stays on the ground, the acceleration in the vertical direction is zero. This means the net force in the vertical direction must be zero. So the normal force and the gravitational force must be equal.

    This gives us a value for the maximum frictional force (Ff). Since this is the only force in the horizontal direction, Newton's second law says it must equal the product of the car's mass (m) and its acceleration (a).

    So if we know the mass of the car (m) and the coefficient of friction (μ), we can calculate the acceleration. This is going to be useful. First, however, there's another factor we have to look at—engine power.

    Constant-Power Model

    Suppose you have a nice sports car. It's red and has a nice sound system, but most importantly it's a Porsche 911 Carrera with a 379-horsepower engine. We can use this power figure to model the motion of a car on the track. Power is something everyone thinks they understand, but most people can't define it. So here you go: Power is the rate of change in energy.

    A car has kinetic energy (K) by virtue of its being in motion. The amount of kinetic energy depends on the mass of the car and its velocity (v).

    Let's say we have a tiny car with a power of 100 watts (1 horsepower = 735 watts). If this car starts from rest, after one second it'll have a kinetic energy of 100 joules (since 1 watt = 1 joule per second). If the car has a mass of 2 kilograms, that would give it a velocity of 10 meters per second after one second. If you double the mass (to 4 kg), it would be 7.1 meters per second.

    What happens to the velocity of the 2-kg car during the next second if we assume the power is constant? It will again increase in kinetic energy by an amount of 100 joules. However, since it started at 10 m/s and this starting velocity is squared, its new velocity will be 14.1 m/s (an increase of only 4.1 m/s) at the two-second mark. And so on. With constant power, the gain in speed with each successive second gets smaller. That's how power works.

    If we apply this idea to a real car (I'm sticking with the Porsche 911), we can see how long it would take to run the quarter-mile track. I'm going to convert the power to watts and the distance to meters—it's just easier that way. The Porsche's mass is 1,493 kilograms (3,291 pounds), which gives me the following plot of velocity vs. time. As you can see, at 10 seconds the 911 is going 63 m/s (140 mph).

    This constant-power model looks nice. It shows that the car increases in speed but not to infinity and beyond. As it goes faster, it's acceleration (the slope of the velocity curve) decreases. Seems real.

    Not so fast! There's a problem with this model: At the start of the race, the slope of the curve is essentially vertical. That means it would have an infinite acceleration. That's just not possible. Looking back at our equation for acceleration based on friction, the highest acceleration would be:

    You can see that it's limited by the materials in the tires and track (captured by the frictional coefficent) and the gravitational field (so, what planet you're on). Notice that the mass has canceled out. It doesn't matter if you have a more massive vehicle. Yes, you get more friction, but it's also harder to accelerate.

    Constant-Friction Model

    Since constant power doesn't work, what about a constant acceleration due to the friction between the tires and road? Let's say the coefficient of friction is 0.7 (reasonable for a dry road). In that case we would get the following plot of velocity versus time for the quarter-mile run.

    I've included the constant-power curve just for comparison. You can see that with this friction model, the car will just keep increasing in speed forever with the same acceleration. That doesn't seem correct either.

    A Better Model of Acceleration

    How about this? The car increases in velocity—however, the rate of increase (the acceleration) is the lower of the two models. So, at the beginning of the run the acceleration is limited by the friction between the tires and road. Then, when the acceleration using the constant power model is lower, we can use that method.

    Before we test this out, we need some real data for comparison. Since I don't own a Porsche 911, I'm going to use the data from this MotorTrend race between a 911 and a Tesla Cybertruck. Here is a plot of the actual position of the Porsche over the quarter-mile track along with the combo power-friction model. (That's now distance on the vertical axis—a quarter-mile is just about 400 meters.)

    It's not a perfect fit, but it could be. I lowered the power of the Porsche a bit in my model because not all of those 379 horses go into the kinetic energy of the car—it's not a perfectly efficient system. But still, this fairly powerful car hits a quarter-mile in 12.2 seconds with a final speed of 116.4 mph (from MotorTrend). Is it possible to get a lower time? Yes. With physics.

    Cheating With Physics

    The dilemma is that our car is limited by the frictional force at the start. You can raise the coefficient with drag-car tires, but you won't be driving home on those. Alternatively, you can boost the friction by increasing the mass of a car. But then you also have more mass that needs to accelerate, so you don't gain anything. The key is to increase the frictional force without increasing the mass.

    Now, there are “super cars” that can do the quarter mile in a crazy 10 seconds. (The sticker prices are crazy too.) But forget that. What if I told you there's a road-legal “hypercar” that can do it in under 8 seconds? True fact. The McMurtry Spéirling clocked a time of 7.97 seconds, even on a slightly wet road. The secret? It has fans that pull air out from underneath, creating a pocket of low air pressure that sucks the car downward.

    Let me just go ahead and draw a force diagram for a car with a fan.

    Even though there's an extra downward pushing force (Ffan), the car stays on the ground and still has a zero acceleration in the vertical direction. In this case, Newton's second law looks like this:

    With the extra downward force, the only way for the forces to add up to zero is if the normal force increases. This means the frictional force is greater, so the new acceleration is greater.

    Now instead of getting a maximum acceleration of 6 to 7 meters per second squared, it's possible to get much higher values—maybe 15 or even 20 m/s2. The McMurtry Spéirling in the video went from 0 to 60 mph in … wait for it … 1.4 seconds. Just thinking about that will pin your ears back.

    The fan idea isn't new. In 1978, the Brabham BT46B used it to win the Formula 1 Swedish Grand Prix, but it was quickly banned. The idea of increasing downward force lives on, however. F1 cars today channel airflow through the body in clever ways to achieve some of the same “ground effect”—justified by saying the purpose is to cool the engine.

    While these airflow systems do help cool the engine, everyone knows the real purpose is to generate low pressure under the car to suction it closer to the road. In fact, the new McLaren W1 that we recently reviewed is a road car that bases its sales pitch on this. (You can buy one for $2.6 million—or you could have if you'd signed up in time. Only 399 are being made, and they're all spoken for.)

    The cool part is that this higher acceleration isn't just for increasing your speed. It also allows the car to slow down faster and even make sharper turns, since these are also types of acceleration. The downward thrust can turn a fast car into a crazy-fast car—if that's what you want. For me, I'm happy as long as it's a red car and it drives.

    The Apple Keyboard Is Bad. Upgrade to the Nuio Flow Instead

    by: Brenda Stolyar

    Upgrade your Apple MacBook setup with Nuio's new expensive, ergonomic, fully wireless split keyboard.

    The Apple Keyboard Is Bad. Upgrade to the Nuio Flow Instead

    Upgrade your Apple MacBook setup with Nuio's new expensive, ergonomic, fully wireless split keyboard.
    Different views of the NUIO Flow Keyboard two separate grey mini keyboards with curved outer edges including an overhead...
    Photograph: Brenda Stolyar; Getty Images

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    Unless you're a keyboard enthusiast or a gamer, with custom builds for specific tasks, it's highly likely you're using whatever keyboard you saw first on a shelf at Best Buy. You probably know nothing about it, other than the fact that it works and gets you through the day. But a company called Nuio, cofounded by brothers Tom and Greg Wilson, want to up the ante on ordinary keyboards, starting with the Flow Keyboard—a premium, fully wireless, ergonomic, split keyboard.

    As an ergonomics accessories company, the Wilson brothers have created an entire ecosystem centered around Flow. In addition to the split keyboard, Nuio offers a whole host of high-end magnetic attachments to pair with it, including a trackpad, deskpad, adjustable stands, and wristpads. All sold separately, you can customize your setup for peak comfort. And since the entire setup is wireless, you can use it virtually anywhere—whether that's at your desk, on a flight, or even on your lap.

    While the Flow Keyboard is, at its core, another split keyboard, Nuio has set out to redefine what it means to have a “standard” keyboard by customizing everything from the shape of the base to the keys themselves. I've been using it for only a week, but it's altered how I think about my own everyday keyboard. It's available for preorder directly from Nuio's site starting at $399, and will ship beginning December 1.

    Compact and Clean

    Nuio was founded by Tom Wilson (CEO) and Greg Wilson (CMO), brothers who both have an extensive background in the design and technology space. Tom Wilson is a former Apple exec who worked on the company's portable devices like MacBooks. Greg Wilson was formerly a designer at renowned industrial design firm Frog Design (Tom Wilson also worked there at one point) and also had his own consultancy called Wilson & Co.

    As the brothers began kicking ideas around for a new company, they wanted to focus on a product that hadn't been changed in a while. With Tom's background in hardware components, they landed on the keyboard.

    “We wanted to start with the keyboard simply because not only had it not changed, but it's literally been 40 years since everybody has a rectangular keyboard,” Greg Wilson explained in a virtual briefing. “With all the technology today, why are we doing it that way? It doesn't really fit anyone. It's a remnant of how typewriters were built.”

    When designing the Flow keyboard, the Wilson brothers made it a point to stay away from that traditional rectangular shape. Instead, they wanted to create a keyboard that contorts to the natural way your hands rest on the keyboard, rather than the other way around. So, they opted for a 3D wave design with contoured keys that are supposed to feel like they're hugging your fingertips. Both the enclosure and keys are built from scratch and proprietary to Nuio.

    But it's not the split keyboard or ergonomic design that's revelatory here—it's the attention to detail. Tom Wilson worked on devices like the 17-inch MacBook Pro and the first-generation MacBook Air during his time at Apple, so it's easy to see the tech giant's influence. Between the aluminum enclosure, the low-profile keys, the easy connectivity, and the clean build (no wires in sight!), it blends in with Apple's own peripherals and devices nicely. It's tough to look at the Flow Keyboard and not immediately think of the Magic Keyboard or a MacBook.

    Photograph: Brenda Stolyar

    Rather than mechanical switches (as seen on most split keyboards), the Flow keyboard comes with scissor switches for less key travel. They're backlit too, so you can type in darker environments more easily. With a wireless link between the left and right side, you don't need use any wires to connect both sides to each other. Simply pair it to your computer via Bluetooth and start typing.

    On the back is a USB-C port on each side for charging and a battery status light indicator. The right side also has a three-position switch that allows you to connect up to and swap between three different devices via Bluetooth. In terms of battery life, Nuio says the keyboard can last up to two weeks with normal usage and some backlight usage. It also comes with a three-headed USB-C cable, so you can charge both sides simultaneously as needed.

    Even though there are two pieces, the keyboard is compact. Both sides come in at 1.01 inches tall and a little more than 6 inches wide. So, it won't take up a lot of room on your desk. It's slightly on the heavier side though, weighing in at 1.33 pounds. I'm used to it since I use heftier mechanical keyboards regularly, but if you use a thinner keyboard, you might be surprised by the extra weight. Nuio includes a carrying case with your purchase to make it easier to travel with.

    It's also available in two layouts—there's a macOS model if you're strictly a Mac user, and a dual version to switch between Mac and Windows. The latter have different shortcut keys, like a win and alt key on both sides. But both feature the same function row keys, complete with keys for Do Not Disturb, brightness, volume, playback controls, and more.

    Photograph: Brenda Stolyar

    This carries over to the accessories too, which are simple but elegant—all of which attach magnetically. You'll have a choice between a trackpad with mechanical click and backlight ($249); small adjustable stands to place the keyboard at a more comfortable height or slant ($59 for a single, $99 for a pair); wristpads ($99 for a pair) if you want more support under your wrists throughout the day; and a desk pad (starting at $129) that comes in both small and large sizes—the latter isn't available quite yet.

    The stands click into place right under each side of the keyboard. Meanwhile, the rest of the accessories (including the keyboard) attach to the deskpad. It makes the entire setup to look super sleek and keeps your desk looking neat. But it also keeps each accessory in place without moving everything around. (The trackpad isn't available yet, so I didn't test it.)

    Both the keyboard and the trackpad also come in a few different colors including Space Gray and Silver (which will match your Mac setup), along with Brown, Dark Green, Rose Gold, and Midnight Blue. The wrist pads and the desk mat, however, only come in white or black. I do wish Nuio would offer the entire setup in all the same colors. As someone who owns a bubblegum pink keyboard, I would've loved an entirely rose gold setup.

    Seamless and Expensive

    I did not type this entire story on the Flow keyboard. I normally use a mechanical keyboard, and if you're also switching from a mechanical to an ergonomic keyboard, there is a learning curve. This will not be an issue if you're already using a split keyboard.

    As with all ergonomic keyboards, the wave design is supposed to be easier on your body. Even with a wired split keyboard, it can be easy to default to a crouched position at your desk—which can also lead to neck, back, and shoulder pain. But the Flow Keyboard gives you the freedom to place it anywhere. While I've been mainly using it at my desk, I'll sometimes place it on my lap when I'm starting to feel shoulder strain, which allows me to lean back and correct my posture.

    The lack of wires also allows you to move both sides as close or far apart from one another allows me to constantly tweak it to find the most comfortable placement on my desk. I'm also a fan of the low-profile keys, which honestly feel a lot like typing on my MacBook.

    Photograph: Brenda Stolyar

    The entire experience has been smooth—between the seamless connectivity, setup, and incorporating it into my workflow (albeit slowly). But it's worth noting that for the entire ecosystem, including the keyboard, stands, wrist rests, desk pad, and trackpad, you'll have to shell out a whopping $1,034. At $399, just the keyboard itself is more than two to three times the price of our other picks.

    In a world where more people are working remotely, on-the-go, or from home, it's no secret that we've all raised our standards when it comes to peripherals. Rather than settling for subpar proprietary equipment, people have begun to pay more attention to aesthetic and features—especially when it comes to our keyboards.

    The Nuio system feels just as expensive as it is. The fact that it's infinitely movable is great, especially when most of us spend a majority of our days in front of our screens. If you're already a wireless, split keyboard user, this is worth the upgrade. If you're not, but you're interested in its benefits, you should probably try a cheaper version to see if you like the layout first.

    The entire Flow Keyboard system is currently available for preorder, but certain configurations and accessories will ship on different dates. The macOS version in Space Gray, the trackpad, and the dark accessories will begin shipping on December 1. The dual OS version, the other six colorways for the keyboard and trackpad, along with the white version of accessories, will ship on January 1.

    13 Best Tested Computer Monitors (2024): Budget, OLED, 4K

    by: Nena Farrell , Eric Ravenscraft

    The Gear team spends countless hours in front of displays while writing for you. So we reviewed those too (including a few portable screens).

    These Are Our Favorite Computer Monitors

    The Gear team spends countless hours in front of displays while writing for you. So we reviewed those too (including a few portable screens).

    If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

    Featured in this article

    My Favorite Everyday Monitor
    BenQ 27-Inch IPS Monitor (GW2786TC)
    Read more

    Great for Double Devices
    27-Inch Philips Creator Series 4K USB-C Monitor
    Read more

    An Upgrade for Coders
    BenQ 28.2-Inch 4K+ Programming Monitor with MoonHalo
    Read more

    A Budget Monitor
    Asus 24-Inch Full HD Monitor
    Read more

    Show more
    4 / 14

    Sony's PSVR2 PC Adapter Is a Poor Apology to PlayStation Fans

    by: Eric Ravenscraft

    A lackluster accessory that gives Sony's VR headset a new lease on life only highlights the failures of the platform.

    Sony's PS VR2 PC Adapter Is a Poor Apology to PlayStation Fans

    A lackluster accessory that gives Sony's VR headset a new lease on life only highlights the failures of the platform.
    Sony PlayStation VR2 a virtual reality headset with two hand controllers. Decorative background green stucco wall texture.
    Photograph: Amazon; Getty Images

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    I held Earth in the palm of my hand. Universe Sandbox, a celestial body simulator, isn’t available on the PlayStation 5, yet I was running it inside the PlayStation VR2 with the help of the relatively new PC adapter. It was thrilling to access a whole new library for Sony’s virtual reality headset. Until it stopped working.

    The PS VR2 has been struggling since its launch early last year. The hardware is impeccable—I rated it an 8/10 in my review largely due to its stellar eye-tracking and comfortable headgear—but there are fewer games than one might have hoped. Some new titles are still on the way, but there aren't many wave-making tentpoles.

    The flagship launch title, Horizon Call of the Mountain, was an excellent showcase for the hardware, but it remains one of the highest-profile games on the platform in the year and a half since its debut. Most other games for the VR headset are also available for less exclusive platforms like the Meta Quest 3. A dearth of games makes the PS VR2 a hard sell when it costs $550 on top of the need to own an expensive PS5. In comes Sony's PC adapter, which lets players use the headset with a gaming PC to access a larger library of VR games, but the reality isn't quite as appealing.

    Complicated Setup

    The PS VR2 PC adapter costs an extra $60 on top of the $550 price of the VR headset. You still need a PlayStation 5 or, with the adapter, a gaming-capable PC to run anything on it. Worse, some of the PS VR2’s features aren’t supported on the PC, like eye tracking or HDR. Compare that to a higher-end VR headset like the Meta Quest Pro, which costs around $1,000 and doesn't rely on another device.

    It doesn't help that the adapter is less straightforward than the word “adapter” might imply. The adapter connects via USB 3.0, but you’ll also need to run a separate DisplayPort cable to your computer. That’s just for the headset itself. The controllers pair via Bluetooth, and each has to be paired separately.

    While setting up the controllers, it started to sink in how clunky this all was. Bluetooth pairing is, in the best of circumstances, mildly annoying, and here I was doing it twice to use something I just bought an adapter for. I also had to ensure the multiple cables I was running to my computer weren't getting in the way of the space I planned to use my headset. This might've been tolerable in 2012, but when we have good standalone headsets now, it's annoying.

    All of this adds up to a tedious setup process that leaves you with a mess of cables running to the headset, and that’s before you use the software. The PS VR2 requires the SteamVR app and Sony’s own PS VR2 app for the headset to work. It took around half an hour to get the headset up and running.

    In fairness, some PC-based headsets still have physical cables connected to the computer or require a bit of setup, but the appeal of the PS VR2 is that it just works when it’s connected to a PS5. Judging it as a PC headset, well, it doesn’t measure up all that well.

    Disappointing Performance

    A lengthy setup process would be forgivable if playing on the headset was worthwhile, but it frequently wasn’t. While looking around the virtual solar system in Universe Sandbox, the game would glitch, causing the image to jitter left and right, which was rather disorienting. I couldn’t tell if this was due to lag with the display or possibly a flaw in the motion tracking, but either way, it was difficult to focus my eyes at times.

    The PC adapter also doesn’t include a Bluetooth radio to pair with the controllers, so you’ll need to rely on whatever wireless adapter is in your computer. This isn't an issue with most prebuilt gaming PCs, and most motherboards these days include a Bluetooth radio, but this still might be an issue for some. (Thankfully, you can snag cheap Bluetooth adapters.)

    Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

    Since Bluetooth devices famously never have connectivity issues, the controllers worked fine. No, wait, the other thing. Every so often, I would find my virtual hands desyncing from my real ones for a second or two. Even when the controllers worked, it was clear that compatibility with PC games was a patchwork solution. At one point, Universe Sandbox instructed me to use “the touchpad” to move up and down. The PS VR2 controllers do not have touchpads. The Valve Index controllers, which the game assumes you’re using, do.

    Some issues are minor and could be solved via software updates, but development on PS VR2 games on the PS5 is already slow-going, so I can't imagine there's a lot of attention around improving the experience with PCs. Reportedly, the headset didn’t sell too well to begin with, making PC usage a niche within a niche. When combined with the larger features that aren’t supported at all it makes for a clunky, patchwork experience that can’t justify its price.

    Uncertain Future

    The PS VR2 PC adapter feels less like expanding into a new frontier and more like a consolation prize. Horizon Call of the Mountain was a fantastic tech demo for what the headset could do, but very few games have come out that utilize the available features.

    Sony’s official page highlighting the games you can play on the headset still prominently features Horizon Call of the Mountain, Gran Turismo 7, and Resident Evil 4, all of which were released in 2023. The fourth game Sony features is Beat Saber, which at this point has become the VR platform equivalent of Solitaire.

    Meanwhile, games coming to the PS VR2 have seen significant delays. Hit horror PC game Phasmophobia was initially supposed to launch in August 2023, six months after the PS VR2's release. After multiple delays, it's only now releasing this Halloween.

    Phasmophobia is also a useful case study of how little dedicated attention the PS VR2 itself gets. The game isn't launching for the PS VR2, it's arriving for consoles—Xbox and PlayStation. That's not to belittle the effort the developers have put into VR support. But like many games for this headset, PS VR2 games are often existing titles originally intended for a 2D screen retroactively adapted for VR use. VR-first experiences like Horizon Call of the Mountain are few and far between.

    It’s certainly not on indie developers to crank out content to keep the ecosystem for Sony’s headset alive, but the lack of major game releases has a cyclical effect. Fewer games mean fewer headsets sold. Fewer headsets sold means game developers have fewer reasons to release games for the hardware. It’s a tale as old as time.

    However nice it might be for modders outside the PS5 ecosystem to have an official way to connect the PS VR2 to a PC, it doesn’t make up for the platform’s shortcomings that led it to need one. The PS VR2 isn’t a good PC-based headset. Maybe it could be someday, with enough support from Sony and game developers. But right now, it’s missing important features, sits on the higher end of the price spectrum, and isn't super quick to set up. Just get a Meta Quest 3S.

    Elehear Beyond Review: Super Big Hearing Aids

    by: Christopher Null

    At nearly twice the size of some competitors, Elehear’s new hearing aids certainly make a statement.

    Review: Elehear Beyond

    At nearly twice the size of some competitors, Elehear’s new hearing aids certainly make a statement.
    Different view of the Elehear Beyond Hearing Aids the closed case a grey pair on a brown surface and a pair inside the...
    Photograph: Christopher Null; Getty Images

    If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED

    Rating:

    5/10

    WIRED
    Fairly affordable (for hearing aids). Great streaming quality. Language translation feature is nifty.
    TIRED
    Yuuuge in size. Incredibly uncomfortable. Very finicky audio amplification; particularly hissy at higher volumes.

    My first encounter with Elehear, an over-the-counter hearing aid brand, earlier this year was positive. The company’s Alpha Pro hearing aids are traditional behind-the-ear devices designed for users with mild hearing loss. They come with an online audiologist session to help new users get up to speed and a “remote sound” feature that lets you drop your phone in front of an audio source and have it piped directly to the hearing aids. At $459, they’re solidly priced and were good enough to earn a runner-up spot on my Best Hearing Aids guide.

    Now the company is back with a follow-up: the Elehear Beyond. Outfitted with a larger operational frequency range, better noise cancelation, and a tinnitus mode, on paper the Beyond aids look like everything you get with the Alpha Pro and more. Unfortunately, as I discovered after a few weeks of testing, more doesn’t always mean better.

    Photograph: Christopher Null

    Let’s start with the hardware because it’s a big change, and I mean that literally. Elehear’s Alpha Pro hearing aids, weighing about 4 grams, aren’t exactly tiny, but the Beyond aids are even bigger. At 4.75 grams each, they're nearly double the weight of Jabra’s 2.56-gram Enhance Select 500 aids, though both have a traditional behind-the-ear (BTE) design. I was taken aback by the size from the moment I unboxed them, and even more so after I looked in the mirror. There’s no hiding these gargantuan teardrops—they caused my ears to visibly stick out from the side of my head.

    But let’s say you're not as vain as me. What about the audio quality? Here, the Beyond aids didn’t overly impress me either. From the moment I put them on, these hearing aids exhibited a noticeable level of background noise, audible even at fairly low amplification levels. It’s better described as closer to a rattle than a hiss, a bit like an old desk fan nearby that’s grinding on bare metal as it spins.

    Photograph: Christopher Null via Elehear app

    Elehear doesn’t include a hearing test mode or an in-depth equalization feature but it does have copious options that can at least help you fine-tune the hiss out and the good sounds in (and, naturally, a new AI-powered algorithm that claims to “continuously learn and adapt to your unique hearing profile”).

    Volume and tone (more treble versus more bass) can be adjusted per ear, and there are eight levels of noise cancellation you can cycle through. (A rocker on the back of each aid also lets you adjust the volume for each ear individually.) You can hear the noise cancellation kick in when ambient sounds start to pick up, which helps to reduce the level of hiss. Finally, the unit can be set to directionally focus on sounds straight ahead of you or 360-degree mode for all-around listening. You can save four custom user modes to try them out for different environments.

    Photograph: Christopher Null

    When tasked with improving the quality of my hearing, my results were mixed. The units can get loud if you crank them up—uncomfortably so—but I found it hard to dial in a balance that worked well for my generally mid-frequency hearing loss. At higher volume levels, voices felt boomy or tinny, with the occasional disconcerting echo. I was most comfortable when I set the aids at low amplification levels—around 25 percent—which dulled the more cacophonous elements of the experience while gently boosting audio levels across the board. It’s not overly the kind of hearing help I need, but your mileage may vary.

    As with the Alpha Pro aids, the Beyond aids quickly switch into streaming mode when a Bluetooth audio source is playing or when you’re taking a phone call. I was surprised by the high quality of the aids in streaming media. Media mode disables all other features in the Elehear app, but both highs and lows sounded clear and vibrant, the latter a particular rarity among hearing aids. The app does include a “phone-call boost” mode that promises better clarity for phone calls. I found the improvement for incoming voices to be small, but noticeable.

    Photograph: Christopher Null

    The aids feature some bonus features, including a tinnitus therapy system, the same remote sound capture feature available on the Alpha Pros, and a new translation feature built into the app. This is similar to Google Translate and other one-on-one translation apps (press a button to talk and a translation appears in text and piped to the hearing aids), but it’s potentially handy to have it built into the hearing aid control app. Too bad only 10 languages are supported.

    While the Beyond aids’ audio performance was hit and miss for me, they may work better for people with different types of hearing loss and the proper attention to tuning. But there’s no getting around the sheer size of these aids. They aren’t just an eyesore—they’re uncomfortable to wear even for a relatively short period, pressing on the back of the ear with a substantial amount of force. I had to take a lot of breaks when testing the Beyond aids to give the backs of my ears a rest (a first), and I never fully acclimated to them.

    It Sure Looks Like Trump Watches Are Breaking Copyright Law

    by: Matt Giles

    The company behind Trump Watches prominently features an iconic image of the presidential candidate on its timepieces. There’s one big problem: It’s not allowed to.

    It Sure Looks Like Trump Watches Are Breaking Copyright Law

    The company behind Trump Watches prominently features an iconic image of the presidential candidate on its timepieces. There’s one big problem: It’s not allowed to.
    Image may contain Donald Trump Marcel de Jong People Person Flag Accessories Glasses Adult Wristwatch and Head
    Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; photograph: Evan Vucci/AP; Watch courtesy of TheBestWatchesonEarth LLC

    In late September, Donald Trump gushed on Truth Social about a just-announced business venture: “The Official Trump Watch Collection,” which, he added, would make a “great Christmas Gift.”

    The pair of watches, initially named “Fight Fight Fight” and “Victory Tourbillon,” retail from between (the recently inflated) $799 and $100,000, and the timepieces were said to feature “premium, Swiss-Made materials” and include “intricate details.” However, as watch connoisseurs began to review the Trump Watches marketing materials, they were less than kind about the craftsmanship. WIRED's watch expert called them the most tragic celebrity watches yet.

    But while the former president was busy hawking the timekeepers, he wouldn’t actually benefit from the sales, having negotiated a name, image, and likeness deal with a little known LLC from Wyoming. How else to explain the defiant fist-raised photo from his post-assassination-attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania—which, according to the Trump Watches marketing materials, will be etched on the back of Fight watch?

    According to the Associated Press, though, TheBestWatchesonEarth LLC advertised a product it can’t deliver, as that image is owned by the 178-year-old news agency. This week, the AP told WIRED it is pursuing a cease and desist against the LLC, which is registered in Sheridan, Wyoming. (The company did not reply to a request for comment about the cease and desist letter.)

    Evan Vucci, the AP’s Pulitzer Prize–winning chief photographer, took that photograph, and while he told WIRED he does not own the rights to that image, the AP confirmed earlier this month in an email to WIRED that it is filing the written notice. “AP is proud of Evan Vucci’s photo and recognizes its impact,” wrote AP spokesperson Nicole Meir. “We reserve our rights to this powerful image, as we do with all AP journalism, and continue to license it for editorial use only.”

    The “Fight Fight Fight” Trump watches will supposedly feature the image of the former president post-assassination-attempt on the rear. TheBestWatchesonEarth does not have the rights to use the image.

    Courtesy of TheBestWatchesonEarth LLC

    Typically it is the celebrity who reaches out to demand their likeness be removed from a product. In 2021, the New York Times documented the litany of products, from electric razors to ponchos and even face paint, with images of B. J. Novak advertising the goods—but the actor said on social media that he was “too amused” to take any action.

    Details about TheBestWatchesonEarth are scant. The company was registered in late July, roughly three months before it began to advertise the watches, and it is unclear who actually owns or is associated with the LLC.

    Fortunately for the Trump watch company, the other watches in the catalog do not feature the iconic post-assassination-attempt image on the rear. Like the just announced “First Lady” piece, an exclusive watch (100 were offered for sale, limit of three per purchase) that is also now elusive—it quickly sold out. With the tagline “Buy one to wear daily … or give one to all the women in your life,” it is unlikely Melania was one of the hundred who bought one—only Trump’s signature graces the dial, and the former First Lady’s name is nowhere to be found on the marketing copy.

    The new Trump “First Lady” watch: “Give one to all the women in your life.”

    Courtesy of TheBestWatchesonEarth LLC

    There are also the 18-karat, diamond-encrusted, $100,000 flagship “Victory Tourbillon” pieces, which have clear exhibition casebacks so owners can view the “TX07 Tourbillon” automatic movement. However, finding any record of such a movement online is difficult.

    Watch commentator Nico Leonard van der Horst said in an Instagram post: “The manufacturer of this movement is Olivier Mory, who ironically is known for making very affordable Tourbillons half made in China, half made in Switzerland. If you were to buy this movement and put it in your own watch, you would be able to buy it for under $3.5k.”

    The 18-karat, diamond-encrusted, $100,000 flagship “Victory Tourbillon” Trump watches have clear exhibition casebacks and so do not infringe AP's image rights.

    Courtesy of TheBestWatchesonEarth LLC

    TheBestWatchesonEarth does have a connection to other Trump-branded products: Earlier this year, a line of Trump sneakers were introduced, and the companies behind both the sneakers and watches were registered by Andrew Pierce of Cloud Peak Law (which also is linked to another law group, Wyoming LLC Attorney).

    That obfuscation is purposeful: Pierce explained on a podcast earlier this year that he specializes in this sort of anonymity, saying, “With so much information being on the internet, how can you anonymously own a website? How can you have a company that isn’t tied back to your home address? Those are things where we can help you cover your tracks a little bit and have some privacy at the end of the day.”

    You Can Now See the Code That Helped End Apartheid

    by: Steven Levy

    John Graham-Cumming, who happens to be Cloudflare's CTO, cracked a 30-year-old encrypted file that had a role in rewriting South Africa’s history.

    You Can Now See the Code That Helped End Apartheid

    John Graham-Cumming, who happens to be Cloudflare's CTO, cracked a 30-year-old encrypted file that had a role in rewriting South Africa’s history.
    LONDON ENGLAND  FEBRUARY 16 Tim Jenkin attends the gala screening of Escape From Pretoria at the Curzon Soho on February...
    Tim Jenkin came up with a system that helped members of the African National Congress communicate safely under apartheid.Photograph: Dave Benett/Getty Images

    John Graham-Cumming doesn’t ping me often, but when he does I pay attention. His day job is the CTO of the security giant Cloudflare, but he is also a lay historian of technology, guided by a righteous compass. He might be best known for successfully leading a campaign to force the UK government to apologize to the legendary computer scientist Alan Turing for prosecuting him for homosexuality and essentially harassing him to death. So when he DM’d me to say that he had “a hell of a story”—promising “one-time pads! 8-bit computers! Flight attendants smuggling floppies full of random numbers into South Africa!”—I responded.

    The story he shared centers around Tim Jenkin, a former anti-apartheid activist. Jenkin grew up “as a regular racist white South African,” as he described it when I contacted him. But when Jenkin traveled abroad—beyond the filters of the police-state government—he learned about the brutal oppression in his home country, and in 1974 he offered his help to the African National Congress, the banned organization trying to overthrow the white regime. He returned to South Africa and engaged as an activist, distributing pamphlets. He had always had a penchant for gadgetry and was skilled in creating “leaflet bombs”—devices placed on the street that, when triggered, shot anti-government flyers into the air to be spread by the wind. Unfortunately, he says, in 1978 “we got nicked.” Jenkin was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

    Jenkin has a hacker mind—even as a kid he was fiddling with gadgets, and as a teen he took apart and reassembled his motorcycle. Those skills proved his salvation. Working in the woodshop, he crafted mockups of the large keys that could unlock the prison doors. After months of surreptitious carpentry and testing, he and two colleagues walked out of the prison and eventually got to London.

    It was the early 1980s, and the ANC’s efforts were flagging. The problem was communications. Activists, especially ANC leaders, were under constant surveillance by South African officials. “The decision was taken to get leadership figures back into the country to be closer to the activists, but to do that they still had to be in touch with the outside,” says Jenkin, who was given a mandate to solve the problem. Rudimentary methods—like invisible ink and sending codes by touch-tone dials—weren’t terribly effective. They wanted a communication system that was computerized and unbreakable. The plan was dubbed Operation Vula.

    Working in his small council flat in the Islington neighborhood in London—nicknamed GCHQ, after the top-secret British intelligence agency—Jenkins set about learning to code. It was the early days of PCs, and the equipment by today’s standards was laughably weak. Breakthroughs in public key cryptography had come out a few years earlier, but there was no easily available implementation. And Jenkin was suspicious of prepackaged cryptosystems, fearing they might harbor back doors that would provide governments access.

    Using a Toshiba T1000 PC running an early version of MS-DOS, Jenkin wrote a system using the most secure form of crypto, a one-time pad, which scrambles messages character by character using a shared key that’s as long as the message itself. Using the program, an activist could type a message on a computer and encrypt it with a floppy disk containing the one-time pad of random numbers. The activist could then convert the encrypted text into audio signals and play them to a tape recorder, which would store them. Then, using a public phone, the activist could call, say, ANC leaders in London or Lusaka, Zambia, and play the tape. The recipient would use a modem with an acoustic coupler to capture the sounds, translate them back into digital signals, and decrypt the message with Jenkin’s program.

    One potential problem was getting the materials—the disks and computers—to Africa. The solution, as Graham-Cumming noted, was accomplished by enlisting a sympathetic Dutch flight attendant who routinely flew to Pretoria. “She didn't know what she was taking in, because everything was packaged up; we didn't talk about it at all,” says Jenkin. “She just volunteered to take the stuff, and she took in the laptops and acoustic modems and those sorts of things.”

    Operation Vula gave the ANC the confidence to sneak some leaders back into the country to supervise anti-government actions, coordinating efforts with the top leaders abroad. The Vula coding system even made it possible for the ANC brain trust to establish contact with the incarcerated Nelson Mandela. He received local visitors who came in carrying books that hid the decrypted dispatches—another product of Jenkin’s MacGyver-esque powers. “We smuggled these specially doctored books—innocuous looking books, maybe about flowers or travel—with a secret hidden compartment in the cover,” says Jenkin. “If you knew how to do it, you could extract the message and put another one back in there.”

    Jenkin’s system allowed countless messages to be sent securely, as the ANC reached closer to its goal of defeating apartheid. He is unaware of any instance where the authorities decoded a single communication. When the ANC was ultimately unbanned in 1991, it credited Operation Vula as a key factor in its victory. In April 1994, Nelson Mandela became the president of South Africa.

    You might be thinking that Jenkin’s story is so amazing that someone should make a movie out of it. Someone already has—focusing on the prison break. It’s called Escape From Pretoria and stars Daniel Radcliffe as Jenkin. There’s also a short documentary about Jenkin and Operation Vula. But until this year one thing had not been documented—Jenkin’s artisanal cryptosystem.

    That’s where Graham-Cumming enters the picture. Years ago, he’d heard about Operation Vula and found the story fascinating. Earlier this year, he came across a mention of it and wondered—what happened to the code? He felt it should be open-sourced and uploaded to GitHub for all to see and play with. So he contacted Jenkin—and heard a sad story.

    When Jenkin returned to South Africa in 1992, he had been worried about taking his tools with him, as some elements of the operation were still ongoing. “I didn't want to just walk in with all this communication equipment and have this coding wind up in their hands, so I compressed everything into single files, zipped it with passwords, and brought in the disks like that.” He had no problem at the border. Eventually, people felt safe meeting face-to-face and no longer needed Jenkin’s system. “Then life caught up with me,” he says. “I got married, had kids and all that. And one day, I thought, 'Let me have a look at this thing again.’ And I couldn't remember the password.” Over the years, Jenkin and others tried to break the encryption, and failed.

    Rather than being disappointed, Graham-Cumming was thrilled. “I’ve got to have a go at this,” he told himself, and asked for the files.

    When Graham-Cumming received them on May 20, he was encouraged that they were compressed and encrypted in the old encrypted PKZIP format. It had a known flaw you could exploit if you knew some part of the original unencrypted message. But you’d have to know where in the zipped file that text is represented. He asked if Jenkin had any unencrypted versions of the code files, and indeed there were a few. But they turned out to be different from what was in the zip file, so they weren’t immediately helpful.

    Graham-Cumming took a few days to think out his next attack. He realized the zip file contained another zip file, and that since all he needed was the right original text for a specific part of the scrambled text, his best chance was using the first file name mentioned in the zip within the zip. “You could predict the very first bit of that zip file using that name,” he says. “And I knew the names he was using. I was like, ‘Oh, I'm gonna try out a name,’ and I wrote a little program to try it.” (This is a much simplified explanation—Graham-Cumming provides more details in a blog post.)

    On May 29, Graham-Cumming ran the program and stepped away to eat a breakfast of scrambled eggs. Twenty-three minutes later, the program finished. He’d broken the encryption and unzipped the file. The workings of Jenkin’s cryptosystem were exposed. It had been nine days since he first exchanged emails with Jenkin.

    The next step was to actually run the code, which Graham-Cumming did using an emulator of the ancient version of MS-DOS used in the Toshiba T1000. It worked perfectly. Jenkin had feared that a professional coder like Graham-Cumming might find his work hopelessly amateurish, but his reaction was quite the opposite. “I’m pretty amazed, given the limitations he had in terms of knowledge, in terms of hardware, that they built something that was pretty credible, especially for the time,” says Graham-Cumming. Even more impressive: It did a job in the wild.

    Jenkin, who has spent the past few decades in South Africa as a computer programmer and web designer, has now uploaded the code to GitHub and open-sourced it. He plans to unzip and upload some of the messages exchanged in the ’80s that helped bring down apartheid.

    “The code itself is a historical document,” says Graham-Cumming. “It wasn't like, ‘Oh, I'm going to create some theoretical crypto system.’ It was like, ‘I’ve got real activists, real people in danger. I need real communications, and I need to be practical.’” It’s also, as he promised me, a hell of a story.

    Time Travel

    In November 2014, I wrote for Backchannel about Graham-Cumming’s campaign to evoke an apology from the UK for its shameful actions against Alan Turing.

    On September 10, Graham-Cumming was sick with the flu. He stayed in bed most of the day. Late in the afternoon, he dragged himself to his computer to check his email. Sitting there, in rumpled gym garb, he found the following message from one Kirsty McNeill, a person he did not know. The email signature, as well as the email domain, indicated an association with 10 Downing Street.

    Graham-Cumming, even in his flu-addled state, knew that this might just be some prank. It wasn’t hard to spoof an address, even from the Prime Minister’s office. He Googled the telephone number in the signature. It was the switchboard to 10 Downing Street. He dialed, asked for Ms. McNeill, and was quickly connected. “We are doing the apology tonight,” she told him. Was it all right if she read him the text? Somewhat stunned, he listened and approved.

    Ten minutes later, his iPhone rang. “Hello, John, this is [Prime Minister] Gordon Brown,” came a familiar voice. “I think you know why I’m calling you.” Over the next few minutes the two chatted. Prime Minister Brown was not a politician of the oozing Tony Blair/Bill Clinton “feel your pain” school. Graham-Cumming admits to some of the same social awkwardness. So the two of them stumbled through a conversation in which Brown confessed that until the petition he had not realized the government’s role in persecuting and prosecuting one of its greatest war heroes. Within a half an hour, 10 Downing released the apology.

    Ask Me One Thing

    Jean-Daniel asks, “Can we train AI to spot and flag AI-generated content automatically? If so can we incorporate that as a default in search engines, phones, and PCs?”

    Thanks for the question, Jean-Daniel. You clearly understand that the messages, videos, and documents that come before us may or may not be generated by algorithms and not humans. There is a natural preference to know if you are on the receiving end of something that came from a living breathing person or a soulless robot. The state-of-the-art large language models do have specific tells. (For one thing, they don’t express themselves creatively as a really smart human can.) It’s reasonable to think that an excellent AI-powered sniffer might be able to root out the fakes. But as AI gets better, identifying its output gets harder. Also, once your AI detector figures out the giveaways, those building the models would probably then share those secrets with their products, and an arms race would ensue.

    Even if you did have a great way to tell what was algorithm and what was human, it would probably be a bad idea to block the AI stuff. All the companies making productivity apps are providing tools for people to use AI for communications, writing, illustrating, and even video production. You might not like AI, but if you block emails and documents that use it you’ll probably miss a lot of meetings and important information.

    Instead of labeling which things are made by AI, I think it’s more practical to adopt techniques that affirm that something came from actual people. For instance, the Authors Guild (disclosure: I’m on the the council) has recently started a program where books can earn a sticker that says “Created by Humans.” Systems like this might help AI-haters like you to limit your consumption to the dwindling percentage of content that’s not output from an LLM.

    You can submit questions to mail@wired.com. Write ASK LEVY in the subject line.

    End Times Chronicle

    When the Northern Lights are seen in the night skies of New Mexico, can we still call them northern?

    Last but Not Least

    Marissa Mayer explains how she found sunshine after leaving Yahoo.

    A key JD Vance adviser touted his addiction to “gas station heroin” and called his boss “a Trump boot licker.” Even dumber: He didn’t erase his social media posts when he took the job.

    National Security Adviser Jack Sullivan is waging a quiet war with China.

    Oh no! It’s the last episode of WIRED’S Gadget Lab podcast! But don’t worry, and for heaven’s sake don’t unsubscribe—a new one is coming soon.

    Don't miss future subscriber-only editions of this column. Subscribe to WIRED (50% off for Plaintext readers) today.

    How to Remove and Replace Your AirTag’s Battery

    by: Reece Rogers

    Is your Apple AirTag running low on power? Here’s how to replace that battery and get back to tracking.

    How to Remove and Replace Your AirTag’s Battery

    Is your Apple AirTag running low on power? Here’s how to replace that battery and get back to tracking.
    close up of hands holding an apple airtag
    Photograph: Alamy

    If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED

    Look, you’re probably here because you recently received an iPhone notification that the battery for your AirTag is running low. Or, maybe you purchased a refurbished version of Apple’s tracking device and want to make sure it has plenty of juice to last for a while. Either way, I’m here to assure you that replacing an AirTag battery is simple. The whole process should take only a couple of minutes.

    How often do you need to replace it? After activating a brand-new AirTag, you can expect to replace that first battery in about a year. The timing of subsequent replacements really depends on the quality of the batteries you purchase, as well as how much you use the tracker. Unlike the iPhone or Apple Watch, the battery in an AirTag is not rechargeable and needs to be swapped out when it dies.

    Thankfully, you don’t have to buy some special battery from Apple. Most lithium CR2032 coin batteries will work just fine. These are the same 3-volt batteries that commonly slot into wristwatches, kitchen thermometers, and other small electronics. A four-pack of the batteries costs around $6 on Amazon.

    Just know that some of these CR2032 batteries have been treated with a bitter coating to discourage children from swallowing them. Not all of those bitter-tasting batteries will work with AirTags, so if yours has this coating, make sure to double-check the packaging to see if it’s compatible. The coated batteries that do work will clearly say “Compatible With Apple AirTag” on the package.

    Swap It Out

    Now that you have a new battery for your AirTag, removing the old battery and adding in the fresh one is simple. Follow these steps:

    1. Flip the AirTag so the silver side with the Apple logo is facing you.
    2. Use your fingertips to press down and rotate the silver piece about a quarter turn counterclockwise. The silver lid should disconnect and loosen.
    3. Remove the silver piece, and now you should be able to pop out the old battery.
    4. Place the new CR2032 battery in the empty slot, with the “+” sign facing you.
    5. Put the silver piece back on top, press down, and rotate it clockwise until the cover locks into place.
    6. Done. But don't throw that old battery in the trash. Recycle it either through Apple or a reputable e-waste service.

    Would you rather have a rechargeable tracker on your keyring or attached to your pet? While the AirTag is WIRED’s recommended tracker for iOS devices, the Pebblebee might be worth checking out for a tracker where you can use a USB-C cord to charge it and avoid changing those pesky little battery cells.

    Check out this list for WIRED’s full roundup of the best trackers we’ve tested.

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    The Paradox at the Heart of Elon Musk’s Cybercab Vision

    by: Aarian Marshall

    During an event for Tesla’s new self-driving Cybercab—due out 2027—Musk revealed an expansive vision for cities transformed by a robotaxi revolution. Experts say the plan has some hitches.

    The Paradox at the Heart of Elon Musk’s Self-Driving Vision

    During an event for Tesla’s new self-driving Cybercab—due out 2027—Musk revealed an expansive vision for cities transformed by a robotaxi revolution. Experts say the plan has some hitches.
    At the Cybercab launch event Telsa also debuted a prototype of a private 20passenger autonomous bus called the Robovan.
    At the Cybercab launch event, Telsa also debuted a prototype of a private, 20-passenger autonomous bus called the Robovan.Photo-Illustration: Wired Staff/Getty

    A sleek, gold car pulls up to a bustling corner market, and a middle-aged couple alights. A woman eases a suitcase into the same vehicle’s spacious trunk. Later, a doodle and its master watch rocket videos in the front seat as the car eases around the neighborhood. No driver, no steering wheel, no pedals, no waiting, no traffic, no worries: This Tesla Cybercab drives itself.

    That’s the vision shown off by Tesla CEO Elon Musk last week during a presentation broadcast from a set at Warner Bros. Studio, outside of Los Angeles. Some 20 prototypes cruised the movie lot as a series of mocked-up images showed scenes of the idyllic tomorrow these sleek people-movers could usher us into. But experts say Tesla’s brave, new city of the future will need more than a few robotaxis to transform this hi-def rendering into reality.

    While mostly sidestepping the technical challenges of building self-driving technology, Musk chiefly focused on what an autonomous taxi service might mean. Starting next year, he said, Tesla owners should be able to share their personal cars by putting them into self-driving mode while they’re not using them. It would be a sort of Uber-cum-Airbnb, the car off hustling for a paycheck while its owner hustles for their own. A vehicle constantly on the move could obviate the need for parking: “You’re taking the ‘-ing lots’ out of parking lots,” Musk quipped, as a presentation showed the asphalt expanses around LA’s notoriously trafficky Dodger and SoFi Stadiums transformed into green spaces.

    In short, Musk and Tesla argued that autonomy means more pleasant lives for all. “A car in an autonomous world is like a little lounge,” Musk said, noting a ride in a self-driving taxi would cost less than even a bus trip. “You can do whatever you want … and when you get out, you'll be at your destination. So yeah, it’s going to be awesome.”

    But make personal self-driving cars too inexpensive, and too pleasant, and you’ve got a city-sized problem on your hands. Cheaper, comfortable rides could lead to even more traffic and even more driving, says Adam Millard-Ball, a professor of urban planning and the director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. For proof, check out the studies of Uber’s and Lyft’s effects on US cities; research suggests that, despite marketing promises about the death of private car ownership, their introduction brought more urban traffic, not less.

    In this way, cheap robot taxis are a sort of double-edged sword, ending in more urban sprawl. “That’s going backward for the environment and for other urban goals—whether it’s being physically active or socially inclusive,” Millard-Ball says.

    Taking the ‘-Ing Lot’ Out of Parking Lot?

    Parks instead of parking lots could be a nice upside to self-driving. (Apartments instead of parking lots could also be really cool.) But it’ll take more than just the switch to self-driving to get there. Anyone running a self-driving car service hoping to use as little parking space as possible will have to make a super efficient network. That’s going to require people to share vehicles. And people don’t love to share.

    “People love to move in a safe and comfortable way,” says Andreas Nienhaus, who heads up the consultancy Oliver Wyman’s Mobility Forum. “Whenever people have the choice and they don’t have the guidance, they will opt into a personal car.”

    Car owners are also unlikely to share their private vehicles with others. Peer-to-peer car-sharing services, which let users rent out their cars to others when they’re not using them, have struggled to scale, Nienhaus says. “The car is still an emotional product,” he says. “It’s mine, and I’m annoyed when it comes back dirty. People are a bit hesitant to give away their car.”

    One way to convince people to share self-driving vehicles would be to create public policies that make it more attractive for them to do so. Congestion pricing—which has worked in cities such as London and Singapore but failed to launch in New York City this year—would make it more expensive for people to enter some city roads at certain times of day. The prospect of splitting those costs could provide the kick in the pants needed to get people into the same self-driving car.

    Problem is, this isn't really in Musk’s control. “An auto manufacturer is not a policy entity,” says Marlon Boarnet, a professor of public policy at USC and the director of the Metrans Transportation Consortium, a transportation research center. It’ll take much more than Tesla churning out Cybercabs to surround Dodger Stadium with green.

    Sharing would require a sophisticated matching system, Boarnet points out, the type even Uber and Lyft don’t seem to have cracked. Both companies once offered more robust and cheap “pooled" options, but those mostly died away during the pandemic, as those companies began to focus on turning profits. There simply aren’t enough people going to exactly the same places at the same times of day to create a perfect shared ride service.

    Cybercab City

    For Tesla, and for cities, the stakes are high. Autonomy without sharing could be exactly the opposite of what Musk wants—a city that’s choked with traffic and a pain to travel in rather than one that is beautiful, with smooth roads.

    The other hitch: Even if Tesla meets its incredibly aggressive self-driving goals—which include full autonomy in Texas and California next year—building a city around self-driving is going to take some time. City infrastructure, with its roads and parking lots and buildings, “is quite static,” says Brian Jencek, the director of planning at HOK, a design and architecture firm. Build a road, and form follows function. Someone will probably drive on it. If cities are redesigned to better accommodate self-driving Teslas, the implications could stick around for a long, long time. Or, as Jencek puts it: “Anytime we alter mobility, we change the very nature of our cities.”

    Ultimate Ears Boom 4 Review: Same Great Sound, Now Easier to Charge

    by: Ryan Waniata

    The latest Boom speaker stays mainly the same, with one key upgrade.

    Review: Ultimate Ears Boom 4

    The latest Boom speaker stays mainly the same, with one key upgrade.
    WIRED Recommends
    Back and front view of the Ultimate Ears Boom 4 a cylindrical shaped speaker. Decorative background beige slate texture.
    Photograph: Ryan Waniata; Getty Images
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    Rating:

    8/10

    WIRED
    Smooth and detailed sound. 360-degree speakers spread the sound around. Excellent wireless range. Handy features like a multiband EQ and Bluetooth standby. IP67 dust and waterproofing. Durable, drop-tested design. Good battery life.
    TIRED
    Bass could be bigger and fuller. Not a major upgrade from the previous model. On the pricier side for its class.

    Ultimate Ears has been steadily expanding its Bluetooth speaker lineup over the past few years, but the fixtures that have kept the brand in business—the popular Boom and Megaboom speakers—have remained virtually unchanged.

    Now in its fourth iteration, the Boom 4 finally gets a USB-C charging port along with a few other tweaks, including updated drivers. The speaker could still use a bit more bass, but Ultimate Ears will happily point to the larger (and pricier) Megaboom for anyone wanting some extra bump.

    In most respects, this is the same Boom speaker UE fans know and love, and that’s mostly a good thing. Offering refined portable sound and easy usability in a near-indestructible package, the Boom 4 is one of the best Bluetooth speakers of its kind.

    Big Ole Buttons

    The Boom 4 wouldn’t be an Ultimate Ears speaker without gigantic volume buttons—that’s kind of the brand's thing. It’s an iconic look that makes controlling the speaker easy, not just for you but for anyone who might wander by your picnic table. Up top you’ll find the rest of the controls, including a centralized multifunction button for options like play/pause and song skipping, a Bluetooth pairing button, and the power key.

    The Boom’s biggest asset may be its build quality. The 7-inch-tall frame is layered in an ultra-tough fabric that makes it quite possibly the most durable speaker of its kind. Like most competitors, the Boom 4 is sealed to resist dust and water; its IP67 weatherproof rating means it can easily shrug off a dunk in the pool or a roll in the sand. It’s drop tested at up to 1.5 meters, and I can tell you from experience that dropping it off a short ledge, down a small flight of stairs, or off your bike onto the pavement may scuff it but likely won’t stop the fun.

    Photograph: Ryan Waniata

    Neither will walking away from the speaker with your phone, a classic party foul in the Bluetooth era. With its up to 150 feet in line-of-sight range and plenty of distance even with obstructions like walls or windows, you’ll have to wander pretty far to cause annoying hiccups.

    The UE app adds more options, including a multiband EQ, the ability to pair the speaker with up to 150 other Ultimate Ears speakers (if you’re running some sort of outdoor rave), and an Alarm that lets you wake up to the last song played. There's also a new megaphone feature that lets you speak through the speaker from your phone, which could come in handy for calling the kids in for dinner a la intercoms from the ’80s.

    My favorite feature has to be the ability to wake the speaker from standby mode without the need to get up from your lawn chair as you sip a cool drink. It’s the kind of convenience usually reserved for Wi-Fi speakers of the Sonos variety, without the need for a nearby network. One caveat is that keeping this feature on drains the battery more quickly with the speaker at rest, so you’ll want to save it for times when you’re using the speaker regularly.

    As for the battery life, UE claims a whopping 15 hours per charge, though I think that’s ambitious. I’ve never got more than around 12 hours in testing, but your experience will vary depending on where you keep the volume.

    Midrange Bliss

    You’ve got to adjust sound expectations for any speaker as packable as the Boom 4, but within those constraints, the speaker provides a remarkably pleasant audio experience. Its dual drivers are designed for 360-degree sound, meaning you’ll get a good experience no matter which way the speaker faces, including whether it’s rolled onto the ground or set on its end caps.

    The basic sound signature dives surprisingly deep into instrumental textures, especially talented from the midrange up. There’s a warm and pulpy punch to instruments like snares and percussion, solid presence in vocals and acoustic instruments, and some sweet clarity rising into the treble, especially noticeable with foundational synths and effects.

    Photograph: Ryan Waniata

    I like to watch TV on my laptop from our little Costco hot tub on a crisp fall evening, and decent sound makes all the difference. The Boom 4 is a great companion for such adventures. I often found myself zeroing in on little nuances like the rasp of Martin Short’s voice in Only Murders in the Building, which really brought the character to life.

    The Boom 4’s main downside is a relative lack of oomph in the lower bass when compared to rivals like the JBL Flip. The Flip’s exposed passive radiators at each end drill down deeper and with more authority in the lower bass, which adds some extra gravitas that works particularly well outdoors. On the flip side (pun intended), JBL’s speaker has more shout and less finesse in the upper mids, sounding more aggressive overall. If the Flip is a rocker, the Boom 4 is more of a jazz cat.

    Either speaker outperforms the Tribit Stormbox 2 (9/10, WIRED Recommends), especially if you punch up the volume; the cheaper speaker resorts to distortion more readily and often. That’s to be expected for something that costs as little as half the price. At $150, the Boom 4 is a little pricey for what you get if you don't always blast the speaker. Many may be fine with the cheaper Flip or ultra-affordable Stormbox 2.

    Otherwise, it’s hard to go wrong with the Boom 4. It’s a killer choice in multiple scenarios, with expansive sound that provides more touch and fidelity than the vast majority of cylindrical copycats, especially from no-name brands. If you’re after a life-proof sonic companion to accompany you everywhere from the backyard to the great outdoors, the stalwart UE Boom speaker remains a top choice.

    ‘Trump Was Born to Be a Teenage Girl’ Is the Sarah Cooper Schtick for the ‘Brat’ Election

    by: Angela Watercutter

    Back in 2020, Sarah Cooper’s “How to Medical” lip-sync of Donald Trump’s proposed Covid-19 cures went viral on social media. TikTok’s latest trend gives that schtick a new spin.

    ‘Trump Was Born to Be a Teenage Girl’ Is the Sarah Cooper Schtick for the ‘Brat’ Election

    Back in 2020, Sarah Cooper’s “How to Medical” lip-sync of Donald Trump’s proposed Covid-19 cures went viral on social media. TikTok’s latest trend gives that schtick a new spin.
    A photo illustration of Donald Trump making a kissing gesture in a Mean Girls inspired Burn Book style.
    Photo-Illustration: Darrell Jackson/Getty Images

    Across nearly 30 videos, TikTokker @kiera.ln has gotten tens of millions of views. They started rolling in when she posted a clip of herself—in a silk robe, wearing sunglasses in bed—lip-syncing Donald Trump’s almost-infamous comments about Florida governor Ron DeSantis (whom he calls “Ron DeSanctimonious”) needing “a personality transplant.” That was in late September. The latest, posted Wednesday, is a lip sync of Trump on Fox News saying he would give himself “an A+.”

    That most recent video felt like a full-circle moment. Trump’s “A+” comment came from an appearance on Fox and Friends in response to a question about how he handled the Covid-19 pandemic. The last person (give or take) to go mega-viral for lip-syncing the former president was Sarah Cooper, whose “How to Medical” video was a send-up of Trump’s suggestions that coronavirus be treated with disinfectant or UV light.

    Released in April of 2020, Cooper’s TikTok went viral everywhere, from YouTube to X. They had nowhere else to go. It was the height of the Covid-19 lockdowns and everyone was stuck inside, doomscrolling for something to laugh at. She ended up getting an agent, a Netflix special, and a role in an off-Broadway play. She wrote three books, including a memoir she released last year. Cooper is the epitome of the viral TikTok star who parlayed her internet fame into a career.

    @kiera.ln could do the same. But her videos, nearly all of which are titled “‘Trump Was Born to Be a Teenage Girl,” are lip syncs for a completely different era. The 2024 election cycle is all about being “brat”; Democrats are coming out and calling Trump “weird” now. Whereas Cooper’s videos felt like an attempt to fact-check the then-president by way of humor, @kiera.ln’s strategy of making him look like a Mean Girl goes straight to his insults. Four years ago, or even eight, Democrats—and those who support them on the internet—were loath to go that low. Calling his “nasty” comments nasty is now a frequent occurrence.

    Comparing the former president to a teenage girl has a long history. Nylon did it in 2016 with Trump’s tweets, highlighting the perceived pettiness or immaturity in his comments. But even then there were those who pointed out it was almost unfair to teenage girls, who, in the opinion of one commenter, at least “have the chance of growing up and realizing just how terrible they've been.” Trump, at 78 years old, doesn’t have as much time left for emotional growth. Campaign emails from his presidential opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, suggest he’s “old and quite weird,” presumably having already reached his final form.

    Over the summer, Charli XCX, whose album Brat launched an entire craze, tweeted “kamala IS brat” shortly after Harris announced she would be running for president. It shifted the course of the election and turned mudslinging slime green. In Charli’s estimation, to be brat is to be vulnerable and messy—and admit it. Mean girls aren’t brats, but brats know how to be honest about who they are. Brats will meet you on your internet turf and call you a clown while applying their own lipstick. Brats go on the Call Her Daddy podcast and say many women are “not aspiring to be humble.”

    Election Day in the US is 18 days away. Then, presumably, Americans will know which meme, er, candidate won. Maybe @kiera.ln will leverage her viral TikToks into something new. Maybe she’ll find herself in 2026 looking back the way Cooper did last year, telling The New York Times amid her Off Broadway debut that she was thankful for the support she got for her Trump lip syncs, even if she feared being known as Trump Girl long after the meme was over, “even though I know that if I die right now, my obituary would have the name Donald Trump in it, which is not great, but what are you going to do?”

    The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to TikTok.

    Following the Trump-Harris debate in September, Cooper released a new video, lip-syncing Trump’s performance. After it went up, she wrote in her newsletter that the decision was regrettable. “I truly feel like this may be my last one,” she wrote. A new TikTokker can come grab the torch.

    Loose Threads:

    Have you heard about Terrifier 3? Apparently Damien Leone’s unrated horror flick brought in a tidy $18.9 million at the box office last weekend. Though, the Hollywood Reporter hears that it might be even more popular than that figure let on, because teens and tweens might be buying tickets to PG-rated The Wild Robot and sneaking into Terrifier 3 instead.

    The big Pokémon data leak. Game Freak, the developer behind many Pokémon games, suffered a pretty substantial data leak last weekend. There’s already a subreddit devoted to going through all the leaked information. It has gotten weird. Apparently there’s some lore about a girl who had a child with a Pokémon?

    Turn down for tots. A 2-year-old took his uncle’s phone at what appears to be a wedding and did a dance that matches perfectly with DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s “Turn Down for What.” You have to watch it to truly appreciate it.

    Sure you have Halloween decorations up, but do you have a Pink Boney Club? There’s still time.

    Dune: Prophecy has a trailer. You should watch it. The Max show about space witches arrives November 17.

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    14 Practical Gift Ideas for New Parents and Their Babies

    by: Nena Farrell

    From a booger buster to a food masher, these gifts make this amazing (and difficult!) job just a little easier.

    14 Practical Gift Ideas for Exhausted New Parents

    From a booger buster to a food masher, these gifts make this amazing (and difficult!) job just a little easier.

    If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

    Featured in this article

    A Sleek Diaper Bag
    Béis The Diaper Pack
    Read more

    A Nose Unplugger
    FridaBaby Electric NoseFrida
    Read more

    A Cozy Carrier
    BabyBjörn Baby Carrier Mini
    Read more

    Transform a Stroller Into a Rocker
    Rockit Rocker
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    4 / 14

    What the US Army’s 1959 ‘Soldier of Tomorrow’ Got Right About the Future of Warfare

    by: Jared Keller

    Sixty-five years ago, the Army's leaders unveiled its “ultimate weapon” for the age of atomic warfare. Here’s how the service’s vision stands up to today's reality.

    What the US Army’s 1959 ‘Soldier of Tomorrow’ Got Right About the Future of Warfare

    Sixty-five years ago, the Army's leaders unveiled its “ultimate weapon” for the age of atomic warfare. Here’s how the service’s vision stands up to today's reality.
    Nash the Slash Clothing Glove Person Firearm Gun Rifle Weapon Grass Plant Footwear and Shoe
    Photograph: Ed Clark; The LIFE Picture Collection; Shutterstock

    On a brisk afternoon in early August of 1959, the United States Army debuted what the service billed as its “ultimate weapon”—not a new bomb, not a specialized tank or fighting vehicle, but a single soldier outfitted in combat gear worthy of the Atomic Age.

    That soldier was Sergeant First Class Ben Sawicki and, for a few fleeting hours, he represented the Army’s vision of the “soldier of tomorrow”—a future warrior that “will look so weird he may scare the enemy to death without firing a shot,” as military planners told Life magazine at the time.

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    Appearing before US military and defense leaders (as well as a few curious civilian spectators) at an Association of the US Army event in Washington, DC, Sawicki struck a “spooky” figure. The soldier’s face was shrouded in a heavy “plastic laminate” helmet outfitted with infrared binoculars for night vision and a two-way radio for rapid communication, his body covered head-to-toe in a camouflage “layered nylon armor” purportedly designed to counter not just small arms fire but also the effects of a nuclear blast, as Army officials told The New York Times.

    Armed with a 7.62-mm M14 battle rifle (and plans for a lighter standard-issue weapon down the line), the most unusual additions to his futuristic-looking kit included a bandolier of explosive charges for digging foxholes and a “jump belt” jetpack that would enable him to traverse the battlefield in 30-foot leaps. With enhanced survivability, mobility, and lethality, he is “accurately representative of the fighting man in the 1965 era,” as a contemporaneous report in the service’s Armor magazine described him, ready for whatever America’s adversaries may throw at him on the nuclear battlefield.

    “With this outfit, I could take on 10 soldiers with ordinary equipment and kill ’em all,” Sawicki colorfully told LIFE.

    Of course, the Army’s “GI of the future” unveiled more than six decades ago, like most fantastic visions of the decades ahead, didn’t totally come true. But some of the elements of the soldier’s ambitious kit did end up foreshadowing future innovations for American combat troops. Here’s a look at what the “soldier of tomorrow” from 1959 got right (and wrong) about the future of warfare.

    Head Case

    The US military had relied on the M1 combat helmet since the United States entered World War II. Sawicki’s helmet stands apart from the M1 not just in the use of novel materials but also in both its departure from the “steel pot” design with slight molding over the ears and its fully integrated communications system in the form of a mounted two-way radio.

    Indeed, Sawicki’s helmet contained the seeds of future systems. The Personnel Armor System for Ground Troops (PASGT) helmet, adopted in the early 1980s as a replacement for the M1, features the added ballistic protection around the ears, while the PASGT’s own replacement, the Modular Integrated Communications Helmet (MICH), was specifically designed for use with modern tactical headsets. Both the PASGT and MICH were made from ballistic Kevlar fiber, which is likely stronger than the nondescript “laminate” alluded to in the coverage of Sawicki’s debut, but the 1959 design elements remain present nonetheless.

    The Army has experimented with mixing and matching these design features in recent years. For example, the new(ish) Enhanced Combat Helmet, designed in conjunction with the Marine Corps to replace the MICH-based Advanced Combat Helmet, is fabricated from thermoplastic rather than Kevlar fiber but primarily available in a “high cut” tactical style that reduces ear coverage. Interestingly, the forthcoming Integrated Head Protection System (IHPS) may come closest to synthesizing most of the unique design of Sawicki’s helmet. Made from lightweight polyethylene and designed with integrated rails for the seamless inclusion of comms equipment and night-vision devices, the IHPS even features an optional motorcycle-style “mandible” and eye shield for additional facial protection—a step closer to the distinctive “permanent smile” that creeped out onlookers in Washington decades ago, as contemporary newsreels described it.

    We Own the Night

    While the Pentagon had fielded night-vision optics since World War II, like the so-called sniperscope that relied on actively bathing targets with infrared light, Sawicki’s helmet-mounted “infrared binoculars” envisioned a shift toward “passive” helmet-mounted devices to help soldiers pierce the darkness. The first significant passive night-vision optic appeared during the Vietnam War, when the Army fielded the weapon-mounted AN/PVS-2 “Starlight Scope” to soldiers tasked with operating in low-light jungle conditions (although, true to its name, the system performed better in moonlight than in total darkness). It wasn’t until the 1970s that the service would end up fielding its first pair of helmet-mounted night-vision goggles, the AN/PVS-5, a system that set the US military on a course to “own the night” with unmatched technological superiority in subsequent decades.

    Today, the prospect of enhancing a soldier’s situational awareness has evolved far beyond simply preparing them to fight at night. The latest night-vision system fielded by the Army, known as the AN/PSQ-42 Enhanced Night Vision Goggle-Binocular (ENVG-B), doesn’t just equip service members with infrared and thermal vision capabilities but can also seamlessly feed the view from a specialized weapon optic known at the Family of Weapon Sights into the goggles’ field of vision, allowing soldiers to scope out the battlefield from cover without exposing themselves to hostile fire.

    Then there’s the matter of the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), the Army’s futuristic “smart” goggles. Currently based on a ruggedized version of the Microsoft HoloLens 2 augmented reality headset, the IVAS is both night vision goggles and futuristic heads-up display, capable of feeding sensor inputs into a soldier’s line of sight. The Army has long experimented with helmet-mounted displays for decades as part of various “future warrior” programs, and the IVAS hasn’t been immune to the pitfalls of previous efforts—namely, complaints from soldiers about “mission-affecting physical impairments” like headache, nausea, and discomfort associated with prolonged use. And the future of the long-delayed headset now appears uncertain anyway: According to Breaking Defense, the service may end up going back to the drawing board with a new primary contractor for the sophisticated system as part of its IVAS Next initiative after auditing its existing night vision goggle capabilities. Still, between the ENVG-B and IVAS, helmet-mounted night vision devices have progressed far beyond anything Sawicki’s chain of command had previously imagined.

    Armor Up

    The bulletproof vest and camouflage suit combination that Sawicki donned for his AUSA debut, referred to in contemporaneous publications as “layered nylon armor” and “layered nylon vest,” is actually a bit closer to modern Army personal protective equipment than the flak jackets that were accompanying soldiers downrange during the Vietnam War. Currently under development, the Soldier Protection System (SPS) offers modern soldiers a “lightweight modular, scalable and tailorable suite of protective equipment,” according to the Army’s description. What this really means is that the protective ensemble comes in several different pieces that work together to maximize soldier survivability without impairing mobility; in terms of body armor, this refers primarily to the soft armor Torso and Extremity Protection subsystem and the hard armor Vital Torso Protection subsystem that, using reinforced ceramic plates, offer improved ballistic protection against small arms fire.

    Protecting soldiers from bullets is one thing, but protecting them from the effects of nuclear explosions, as Army leaders told The New York Times Sawicki’s suit would, is another thing entirely—at least, in terms of equipment. While the well-worn Mission Oriented Protective Posture (MOPP) ensemble has been safeguarding Americans service members against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats for years, it’s an entirely separate system of personal protective gear rather than one integrated into the SPS or the standard-issue Army Combat Uniform. And while the 1959 design calls for specially designed “‘welded’ combat boots” and “molded plastic gloves” to help protect soldiers on an irradiated battlefield, modern troops must, unfortunately, go into battle with their Army Regulation 670-1-authorized boots and tactical gloves, apart from what’s in their MOPP kit. Then again, if the nukes do start flying, nobody will survive long enough for ground combat anyway.

    Bullet Time

    While the 1959 “soldier of tomorrow” appears armed with an M14, advances in firearms technology have long since left the beloved battle rifle in the dust. The Army began replacing the M14 with the lighter-weight 5.56-mm M16 assault rifle in the late 1960s, which was itself replaced by the shorter-barreled M4 carbine during the Global War on Terror in the 2000s. Replacing the M16 and M4 family of rifles has proven difficult in the past, but it’s safe to say that the promises from Army brass in 1959 of a lighter standard-issue rifle for soldiers have, for the most part, come true in the intervening decades—even if the new XM7 rifle, recently adopted under the service’s Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) program, is actually noticeably heavier than the M4.

    So, too, has the promise of “new high-velocity bullets.” While the Army in the early 2000s fielded the 5.56-mm M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round for improved performance over the standard M855 ammo previously adopted in the 1980s, the service undertook a major small arms study in 2017 to determine whether soldiers required a different caliber ammunition to deal with the sudden proliferation of body armor among adversaries. The study determined that the Army’s next rifle should come chambered in 6.8 mm, which would purportedly offer significantly improved performance at range compared to both 5.56-mm and 7.62-mm rounds. From there, the Army ended up selecting Sig Sauer to produce its two 6.8mm NGSW systems in 2022, weapons the service began officially fielding earlier this year. It may have taken several decades, but the Army’s new high-velocity round is finally here.

    Rocket Man

    While certain elements of Sawicki’s combat kit are clearly represented in recent military innovations, others simply never came to fruition. The automatic foxhole-digging charges, for example, never materialized as an effective replacement for the beloved handheld entrenching tool, despite their prevalence among military futurists at the time. But if there’s one vision that has persisted in military and defense circles, it’s that of jetpack-equipped troops.

    The Defense Department has pursued the militarized jetpack for decades, starting with research and development in the 1950s and culminating in October 1961 with the successful demonstration of Bell Aerosystems’s Small Rocket Lift Device (or, colloquially, the “Bell Rocket Belt”) for President John F. Kennedy at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The Army ended up abandoning development of the Rocket Belt over fuel constraints that limited its potential tactical applications, but US military planners would revisit the concept time and again in subsequent decades.

    Unfortunately, the era of the American jetpack appears to be coming to a close: The Pentagon has moved on from its jetpack dreams in favor of a more elegant individual lift effort in the form of the powered paraglider. Indeed, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Portable Personal Air Mobility System program is testing lightweight one-man flight systems, while the Army recently released a solicitation for its similarly named Personnel Air Mobility System effort for a motorized paraglider for paratroopers that, if all goes to plan, would end up “reducing dependency on traditional aircraft platforms and extending the range available through traditional parachute infiltration systems,” as the service put it. The US military will teach individual service members to fly, but it most likely will not involve a jetpack anytime soon.

    The Tomorrow War

    Sixty-five years after Sawicki debuted the Army’s next-generation kit, the “soldier of tomorrow” will actually look more like this:

    Photograph: Jason Amadi

    And as the US military gears up for the next big war, the combat load-out of the average soldier will only continue to evolve, from lighter and more versatile anti-tank weapons to airborne drones and other battle robots that will have troops’ backs as they operate on increasingly complex and chaotic battlefields. Indeed, the Army recently unveiled a new fielding strategy called “transformation in contact” that will see soldiers deploy around the world with fresh weapons and training to provide immediate feedback to commanders about how to design the future force. The Pentagon’s byzantine procurement architecture will almost certainly slow things down a bit (don’t ask the Army how many times it has tried to replace the Bradley Fighting Vehicle in the past two decades), but the service appears more prepared than ever to get individual soldiers the gear they need for the next conflict—and fast.

    Sawicki may not have proven an “ultimate weapon” for the Army to deploy around the world, but 1959s’ “GI of the future” made some fairly accurate predictions about the changing face of the American soldier. But beyond the foxhole-diggers and the jetpack, the only thing it got seriously wrong was the prevalence of nuclear fallout on the battlefield. Let’s hope it stays that way.

    How a 12-Ounce Layer of Foam Changed the NFL

    by: Alex Prewitt

    Even the makers of the Guardian Cap admit it looks silly. But for a sport facing an existential brain-injury crisis, once unthinkable solutions have now become almost normal.

    How a 12-Ounce Layer of Foam Changed the NFL

    Even the makers of the Guardian Cap admit it looks silly. But for a sport facing an existential brain-injury crisis, once unthinkable solutions have now become almost normal.
    A football helmet in a blue locker
    Courtesy of Guardian Sports

    Late in his team’s game against the Green Bay Packers on September 15, Indianapolis Colts tight end Kylen Granson caught a short pass over the middle of the field, charged forward, and lowered his body to brace for contact. The side of his helmet smacked the face mask of linebacker Quay Walker, and the back of it whacked the ground as Walker wrestled him down. Rising to his feet after the 9-yard gain, Granson tossed the football to an official and returned to the line of scrimmage for the next snap.

    Aside from it being his first reception of the 2024 National Football League season, this otherwise ordinary play was only noteworthy because of what Granson was wearing at the time of the hit: a 12-ounce, foam-padded, protective helmet covering called a Guardian Cap.

    Already mandatory for most positions at all NFL preseason practices, as well as regular-season and postseason practices with contact, these soft shells received another vote of confidence this year when the league greenlit them for optional game use, citing a roughly 50 percent drop in training camp concussions since their official 2022 debut. Through six weeks of action this fall, only 10 NFL players had actually taken the field with one on, according to a league spokesperson. But the decision was easy for Granson, who tried out his gameday Guardian Cap—itself covered by a 1-ounce pinnie with the Colts logo to simulate the design of the helmet underneath—in preseason games before committing to wear it for real.

    “I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t affect anything for me,” the 26-year-old told WIRED a few days before facing the Packers in week two. “I thought, even if it looks kind of silly, it’s worth it.”

    There is no ignoring the goofy aesthetics of the puffy, blobby Guardian Caps. The product’s parent company, Guardian Sports, even has staff T-shirts that declare, LOOK GOOD, FEEL GOOD, PLAY GOOD—with LOOK GOOD crossed out. “Condom caps, mushroom heads—we’ve heard them all,” says Erin Hanson, cofounder of Guardian Sports alongside her husband, Lee Hanson. “We just laugh, because we agree.”

    It can be tough to square the reality that the apparent future of football headgear resembles something out of a ’60s-era sci-fi movie. But the fact that Guardian Caps are now allowed at all in games in the NFL—a league known for policing every inch of player equipment to protect its image—doesn’t just speak to their lab-tested utility (even if published, peer-reviewed on-field data remains lacking). It also reflects the urgency of the moment for football at large.

    The dangers of strapping on a helmet have never been clearer, given the link between repeated blows to the head—whether concussion-causing or not—and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (otherwise known as CTE, a brain disorder associated with cognitive issues like depression and progressive dementia that can only be diagnosed posthumously). Not coincidentally, the race to find answers has become faster and more lucrative than ever, between the NFL’s funding of private research efforts and a rapidly innovating football headgear industry.

    And at the center of it all, on the sport’s biggest stage, is a literal mom-and-pop shop that, less than a decade and a half ago, was struggling to find a foothold in football as anything but a joke.

    The story of the Guardian Cap starts in 1996, some 15 years before its invention. Settled in the Atlanta area with their then-four children, Erin, a former middle-school math teacher, and Lee, a chemical engineer, teamed up to found The Hanson Group, a business-to-business provider of chemical materials. Specializing in polyurethanes and epoxies, the company has since built, among other things, transparent body shields for the US Army, coatings of fuel tank plates for Boeing airplanes, and the outer layers of multiple brands of golf balls.

    Then, in 2010, the Hansons were contacted out of the blue by an industrial designer named Bert Straus, who decades earlier had created a padded helmet attachment, the ProCap, that was worn in games by a handful of NFL players. Explaining that he was working on a new type of headgear, a hard-shell helmet with interior padding as well as a ProCap-esque soft shell mounted on top, Straus enlisted The Hanson Group to make the integral skin foam for this cushioned outer layer.

    That winter, the trio traveled to a hotel ballroom in Manhattan and presented their product to NFL officials as part of a special league committee meeting on helmet safety. Even with live testimony provided by former Buffalo Bills safety Mark Kelso, who wore a ProCap for four-plus seasons in the early ’90s, the attempt to convince the NFL of the potential of soft-shell technology was not well-received, the Hansons recall. “That lit a fire under us,” Erin says.

    Convinced that the best market opportunity lay with a one-size-fits-all option that could retrofit existing helmets at every level of football, as opposed to the brand- and model-specific ProCap, Erin and Lee struck out on their own. But the biggest difference in their eventual prototype had to do with how it was attached to the helmet in the first place: Its straps looped around the facemask and fastened to themselves, thereby loosely “floating” on top of the helmet rather than affixing directly via sticky-backed tabs.

    The result was what the Hansons would later summarize in their United States patent request as a “protective helmet cap” with “a durable energy absorbing outer shell, which lessens the initial impact to the helmet … [and] an inner surface that allows the outer shell to slide over the surface of a helmet thereby reducing forces applied to a wearer.”

    As development continued throughout 2011, Erin and Lee used money from The Hanson Group to send the caps away for independent drop testing—a longtime headgear industry standard in which a helmet-wearing dummy head is dropped onto a modular elastomer pad for measuring impact and shock absorption—at accredited sites like Oregon Ballistic Laboratories, ICS Laboratories, and the Southern Impact Research Center. They also shelled out for additional outside testing to ensure that the caps wouldn’t affect neck torque and that they maintained a lower coefficient of friction relative to the usual football helmet’s polycarbonate shell, to ensure that crucial “sliding” effect.

    “Over the years, we’ve spent a couple hundred grand on testing, because we did so much before we put them on the field,” Erin says. “The whole goal was to help, and it was certainly to not hurt, so we had to vet the product.”

    Initially branding themselves as POC Ventures—the acronym stood for “protecting our children”—the Hansons launched publicly at the January 2012 convention of the American Football Coaches Association in San Antonio. The goal was to sell caps and eventually attract an established sports equipment company to buy them out. Instead, Erin says, what few attendees dared approach their booth weren’t exactly warm.

    “You’re sissifying football,” Erin says, recounting one reaction.

    “That’s the stupidest thing in the world,” Lee says of another.

    Courtesy of Guardian Sports

    But they soon found their first big believer. That year, at a medical conference in Destin, Florida, the Hansons met Jeffrey Guy, a physician for the University of South Carolina athletic department, who later looked at the caps’ testing data and came away impressed enough for the Gamecocks football team—including future first-overall NFL pick Jadeveon Clowney—to start using them in their 2013 summer practices. Naturally it wasn’t long before one of South Carolina’s biggest rivals, Clemson, had placed orders too.

    “It really was one team giving it a shot, and it just kept spreading,” Erin says.

    Along the way, the Hansons abandoned the POC Ventures name after receiving a strongly worded letter from the Swedish cycling and snow sport helmet manufacturer POC, settling on Guardian and a halo logo as reflections of their religious faith. (They later switched the latter, too, to an angel’s wing.) Their belief in their business mission was soon rewarded in April 2017, when the rechristened company was anointed as a winner of an NFL-sponsored research competition for protective football equipment, the HeadHealthTECH challenge, receiving $20,000 to fund future biomechanical testing for their Guardian Caps.

    The Hansons were back in the door.

    Technically speaking, Erin and Lee never saw their grand prize. Rather, the money ended up being routed directly to Biokinetics, an Ottawa-based laboratory that partners with the NFL for helmet testing. The results were then analyzed by Biocore, a biomechanical engineering firm out of Charlottesville, Virginia, that also acts as a league consultant for player equipment, including helmets.

    At the time, the lone model of the Guardian Cap was the Guardian XT, a 7-ounce soft shell then already popular with a growing handful of elite college programs and hundreds of high school teams nationwide. But the results didn’t measure up under lab conditions simulating the higher speeds and masses of professional football hits. “We didn’t really find that it had much of an effect on the NFL impact environment,” says Ann Bailey Good, a senior engineer at Biocore.

    So the Hansons added an extra layer of padding to the XTs to create a beefier version, the 12-ounce Guardian NXT (with the N standing for NFL). It fared much better. For a 2021 article published in Annals of Biomedical Engineering, five authors—Bailey Good, two Biocore colleagues, and two other engineers who regularly consult for the NFL Players’ Association—subjected their crash dummy helmets to two main tests. The first involved hitting them with a pneumatic ram at speeds and points of impact that were determined in part through video review of concussion-causing plays among linemen during past NFL games. The second, for which the collision sites were picked to minimize face mask interaction and thus maximize helmet-on-helmet exposure, saw dummies with NXTs crash into each other with the aid of an electric belt-driven sled.

    The results were assembled using the Head Acceleration Response Metric (HARM), a formula that Biocore, the NFLPA's engineering consultants, and several other researchers helped develop. for measuring the severity of an impact and how that correlates to helmet safety and performance. On average, as the study found, the addition of a Guardian NXT was reduced HARM by 9 percent over control helmets with no caps; by comparison, its competition in the study, the ProTech—a modernized version of the ProCap—only reduced HARM by an average of 5 percent.

    Two aggregate scores were also calculated, by weighing test conditions based on how often those types of impacts occurred to actual NFL linemen and how many reported concussions were sustained due to those impacts. The NXT performed similarly well here, leading the study to conclude that the “Results … suggest that using the GC NXT may reduce the head impact severity exposure for linemen.”

    “That’s really when it started to become a thing in the league,” Bailey Good says now.

    The NFL soon brought the Guardian Cap to its Health and Safety Committee, a group of mostly team-, league-, and union-affiliated doctors, and to its Competition Committee, a rules-making body of coaches and team executives appointed by commissioner Roger Goodell. “We talked about the benefits we saw,” says Jeff Miller, an NFL executive vice president overseeing health and player safety.

    The next year, in 2022, the caps were rolled out for something of a trial period as the Competition Committee recommended that club owners vote to mandate them at preseason practices for select positions that according to league data had sustained the “most frequent head impacts” (offensive and defensive linemen, tight ends, and linebackers) during practice, Miller says. The mandate also only lasted for a four-week stretch when the “greatest density of concussions” had historically occurred—from the start of training camp to the second preseason game.

    As the Guardian Caps gained more exposure thanks to the NFL’s endorsement, increasing outside research helped shed more light on how they function. “I think it seems logical to most folks: If you cover your whole head in a massive pillow, maybe that’d help you more,” says Nicholas Cecchi, a colead author on a 2023 study at Stanford University that in part performed similar lab impact tests on a version of the Guardian XT as Biocore did with the NXT several years prior. “But there’s more to how it works that didn’t seem intuitive.”

    In particular, Cecchi, who was a PhD student in bioengineering at the time of the study, cites the “sliding” effect produced by the Guardian Caps’ design. “It really did seem like their main effectiveness was coming from the reduced surface friction on the exterior, and then also the decoupling of different layers,” he says. In other words, the Guardian Cap isn’t just a hat on a hat; the two-part, add-on system has its benefits.

    When a helmet hit happens, says Cecchi, “you’ve got linear forces and rotational forces. Linear are going to be reduced by compression of the materials. Rotational forces will be reduced by the shearing and sliding of the different materials. The more that happens, the more it’ll absorb the rotation, so less rotation will be experienced by your head.

    “From the lab tests, it seemed very clear, in almost all scenarios, the Guardian Cap reduced the magnitude of those rotational accelerations, and other metrics linked to football-related injury risks, by a good amount.”

    Less conclusive is the data regarding how the Guardian Caps perform on the actual field. In addition to their lab component, Cecchi and his colleagues used instrumented mouth guards to look at helmet-to-helmet impacts sustained by a handful of linebackers on Stanford’s football team in practices over two seasons: in 2019, when players wore bare helmets, and in 2021, when Guardian Caps were mandatory.

    “We did not observe any significant reductions in any measure of impact severity after implementation of the padded helmet shell cover,” the study concluded.

    Similarly, in 2022, at the University of North Carolina, sensor-equipped helmets logged 14 full-contact practices among 10 players: five with Guardian Caps and five who opted to not wear them. As researchers later wrote in a late-2023 report for the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, the coverings “did not affect head impact kinematic outcomes.”

    But these studies also categorized their on-field findings as “preliminary” and “pilot,” respectively, in part due to the obvious small sample sizes. Here again, Biocore, backed by the NFL, is leading the way: According to Bailey Good, a paper unpacking the Guardian Caps’ effect in their first two years of preseason practice use—in particular the league’s touted 50 percent drop in concussions among linemen, tight ends, and linebackers, from an average of 35 in 2018, 2019, and 2021 to 18 during this last postseason—was submitted “a few months ago” and is currently being peer reviewed.

    “We certainly considered other things like number of practices, practice intensity, et cetera,” Bailey Good says. “But looking at the results that we saw in the preseason related to concussions, it was very promising.”

    Meaningful game data will take even longer to surface; the NCAA has yet to formally approve Guardian Caps for games at the college level, and while the National Federation of State High School Associations has allowed them in both practices and games since 2013, few examples of the latter exist. But the Hansons reject the idea that further testing is required to judge the credentials of their creation.

    “We didn't just develop this three months ago—it’s been out on the field for 12 years,” Lee says. “I know it's anecdotal data, but what everyone tells us is that they feel better, they play better, and they have reductions in the numbers of injuries.”

    At the same time, the Hansons are sensitive to what they see as a common overstatement of the caps’ capabilities. “We do not talk about reducing concussions,” Erin says. “Science can only measure reduction of impact, reduction of forces. How that relates to brain injuries—there's a lot of unknowns that are still out there. Is it responsible to say this is the panacea for all? No, it's not going to fix everything.

    “But do we know they’re making a difference? Hell yeah.”

    More and more appear to be agreeing every day. Sitting in a conference room at the Guardian Sports offices in late August, Erin hits Play on a voice memo that a new client from Denver recently sent to Guardian’s national sales manager. “This is a good one,” she says, as a familiar southern twang comes through the speaker:

    “Hey … this is Peyton Manning calling … I coach an eighth-grade youth football team … and I was thinking I wanted to maybe ask about ordering some Guardian Caps … I feel like it’s the right thing to do.”

    Two football helmets bake in the afternoon sun atop a picnic table, one wearing a Guardian Cap and the other bare. The Hansons put them here, outside the entrance to their company’s headquarters in a suburban business park northeast of Atlanta, as a practical demonstration of how the coverings, at 90-plus degree temperatures, can help insulate the helmet from outside heat. (Miller says that NFL testing has backed this up.)

    Bearing an angel’s wing logo on the front, the black-walled building is a 90,000-square-foot facility that Guardian Sports splits with The Hanson Group. Together it is a family operation in the most literal sense: Out of close to 50 employees between the two sides, 10 are members of the Hanson clan, including three of Erin and Lee’s now-five children and two sons-in-law.

    It took almost a full decade for Guardian Sports to become financially self-sustaining, and even longer to finish paying back The Hanson Group for the seven-figure costs of external lab testing and an early bulk purchase of more than 100,000 caps—that happened just last year. But the bustling scene suggests that business is good today. In the warehouse, towering stacks of Guardian Caps inventory have overtaken what was once an employee exercise area, like cubed cardboard weeds. In the loading dock, a truck drops off a fresh supply of green and maroon caps air-shipped from the company’s factory in Dongguan, China after their stockpile of those colors ran out.

    When it comes to the Guardian Cap, the XTs sell for about $70 at retail stores and online but less than $55 in group orders for teams, while the NXTs are only sold direct to teams at an average of $100 apiece. According to the company, some 77 percent of its overall sales happens in bulk. But only a small portion of that total—about 200,000 caps sold this year, the company projects—comes from the NFL’s 32 teams, each of which typically stocks about 100 per season, replacing them every one to two years depending on the position and wear.

    Not counting the cost of NFL testing through Biocore, though, Erin says Guardian has “never received a dime” directly from the league. Adds Lee, “They own the data too—only when they publish it, we get to see it.” But the benefit of having a public stamp of approval in the shape of the NFL shield is obvious.

    “We had to have outside validation, and that’s what the NFL has done for us,” Erin says. “You can’t put a value on the marketing that you get from your product. But they’re not writing us checks, that’s for sure.”

    Ann C. McKee, director of Boston University’s CTE Center and chief of neuropathology at the VA Boston Healthcare System, analyzes brain tissue on May 31, 2017.Photograph: Stan Grossfeld; The Boston Globe/Getty

    On the flip side, the company has already done more for the NFL than its owners ever imagined. “The last thing we ever wanted to be in was the customization business,” Erin says, referring to the nine months it took to create the Guardian Cap pinnies that matched the helmets of every team so they could be worn in games this season. Between designing the concepts, conducting testing through Biocore, enlisting two college teams (Colorado and Georgia) to pilot them at spring practice, and ensuring the proper pantones and logos—all but four sent the initial batch back, including the Carolina Panthers, who requested that the silver pinnie “sparkle more,” Erin says—every step was geared toward aesthetic goals. Asked if it was a necessary headache to collaborate with the league, Lee replies immediately: “Yes.”

    Adds Erin, “If it allows a player who feels like he's getting the same benefit in a game as in practice, then it's worth it.”

    To this end, Guardian recently completed production on versions 2.0 of both the XT and NXT caps, featuring flatter, more helmetlike exteriors onto which teams can iron on logo decals. “The barriers to gameplay, I think, are the lack of gameplay testing data and the aesthetics,” says chief operating officer Jake Hanson, Erin and Lee’s son. “The more we can get at those with the 2.0s, the better.”

    Given the relative lack of caps in NFL stadiums so far this season, it seems unlikely that they can catch on as a widespread gameday add-on. But even their future in practice remains uncertain. “The Guardian Cap could be a transition as we move from good helmets to better helmets, as that technology continues to improve,” Miller says.

    That time might already be here: Entering this season, Biocore approved six new helmet models that would allow any player who wore one to be exempt from the Guardian Cap practice mandate. And more than 200 players have already taken advantage of the carve-out, “an unprecedented rate of adoption for a new piece of equipment,” NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills said on a media call in early October.

    To both the lab and the league, the decision here boiled down to incentivizing players to use better-performing helmets.

    “Decreasing benefit to wearing it, to the point where some of the technology that the helmets have now made the addition of a Guardian Cap on top of it of less utility than it would’ve been with one of the other helmets,” Miller says, when asked why the coverings were made optional at all. “And eventually you get to the plus-minus of, well, you’re adding a bunch of ounces to your head.”

    Should the Hansons buck the odds once more and become a bigger NFL game-day presence down the line, it might be former players turned coaches leading the way. Like Manning. Or former running back and fellow Hall of Famer Jerome Bettis, an early proponent who bought Guardian Caps for an Atlanta-area youth football league that he and ex-Pittsburgh Steelers teammate Tim Lester started for their sons in the mid-2010s.

    “You'll get these comments about, how can you put these things in the game?” Erin says. “Then you have interactions with people who are actually living the repercussions, it's a whole different thing.”

    As for one of the few current players to have embraced the Guardian Caps in games, the Colts’ Granson doesn’t see himself stopping anytime soon.

    “A big hit’s gonna happen—that’s the inevitability of the game,” he says. “But if I can reduce the contact of the little hits, then that’ll spare me down the road.”